Thanks to fast-growing usage of its mobile apps, social video chat startup ooVoo has been growing fast, topping 54 million total users. That’s up pretty significantly from the 46 million users it had just a few months ago, when it rolled out its new iPad app. According to ooVoo President Jay Samit, it’s adding close to 100,000 new users a day.
Well now it’s updated its iPad and Android apps to now include high-quality, four-way chat sessions between users. While ooVoo users can host chats with up to 12 total users, the new version of its apps will let viewers see up to four participants at once. In addition to high-quality, four-way video chat, the new apps also include group messaging and push notifications to enable users to keep connected at all times.
Users have many ways to connect with each other — in addition to its mobile iOS applications, ooVoo allows users to log in and chat via Facebook and Mac and PC desktop apps. But mobile is clearly the future of the service: About 30 percent of all video traffic comes from mobile devices, and now 50 percent of all new users are mobile users.
While four-way video chat, group messaging, and push notifications are available on both Android and iOS devices, the company is making a big bet on Google’s mobile operating system. It’s overcome intense Android fragmentation to enable four-way video chat on nearly 250 devices. The company has also deeply integrated with the native Android address book and created a widget to show online friends, missed calls, and chat sessions on the device’s home screen. It’s also optimized for LTE mobile networks, which are fast but also bursty, according to ooVoo CEO Yuval Baharav.