Group calling services are nothing new. It is being offered by familiar conference calling apps such as Skype, Google, and Kakao Talk, just to name a few. But Line, the Japan based messaging upstart company, has its own take on it via Popcorn Buzz, an app that allows users to facilitate group calls involving as many as 200 participants.
One of the great things about the Popcorn Buzz app is that it is absolutely free of charge. Incidentally, Line has its own voice calling service called Line Call. It may not be expensive, but it is hardly free of charge. Popcorn Buzz, however, is totally free.
Free availability notwithstanding, perhaps the most interesting thing about the Popcorn Buzz app is its ability to facilitate group calls with 200 callers. On paper, that may seem a bit too much -- who exactly wants to join a conference call involving more than a hundred people? But props to Line for highlighting in a rather extreme way that Popcorn Buzz can be used to conduct groups calls for as many participants as users want. Line has certainly promoted the app as something that users can make use of in talking with family members, friends, classmates, former classmates, or fellow club members, all at once, no matter how many they all are.
Line is even saying that Popcorn Buzz is as useful for personal purposes as it is for business purposes. After all, if you want to talk to 200 of your business associates all at once, why not?
Despite having 205 million users to its name, especially in its home country Japan and other Asian regions, Line still lags behind leading messaging service providers like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. But if the company continues to introduce new services like the Popcorn Buzz app, it just might give itself a chance of contending with the big boys.
The app has now gone live on the Android platform. Line is quick to note that an iOS version is currently in the works, and should be released within the coming few weeks. Moreover, Line is also preparing to introduce new features like group video chat capabilities, and a functionality that lets users talk with a preset LINE chat group. Also, the Popcorn Buzz app comes in languages that include Japanese, English, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Malaysian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
