Rounds (formerly 6rounds.com) has announced the launch of an interactive video chat platform for Facebook Platform. Users have already been using Rounds to video chat in real time while engaging in various social activities and real-time games. Offering it for Facebook obviously opens up the door for a great deal more use, given that Facebook has half a billion users.
"We created Rounds to give online social networking and social gaming more of a real-time, fun, and collaborative feeling," Dany Fishel, co-founder and CEO of Rounds tells WebProNews. "Rounds bridges the gap between real life and the online world by helping people feel close to one another no matter how far apart they are geographically."
Rounds was founded in 2008 and has raised $2 million in venture capital funding from Rhodium and Startup Factory investment groups. "Social networking and social gaming continue to grow in popularity, but with Rounds, social networking just got a lot more social," Guy Weltsch, Managing Director at Rhodium tells us. "We were attracted to Rounds because its technology is unlike anything on the market today. Rounds will help take social networking to the next level."
As Rounds prepared its Facebook launch, Facebook launched its own Facebook Live video channel. "Seems like Facebook is trying to dial up the engagement level through video and Rounds definitely ties into this trend," a company rep says.
With the Rounds Facebook app, users can participate in video chats with no download requirements. The company suggests the following use cases: take snapshots of yourself and share them on Facebook, jointly browse Facebook content with friends, watch YouTube videos together, play real-time multi-user social games, Collaborate on virtual whiteboards, or co-browse with Google Maps.