Microsoft Teams has been redesigned to become a WhatsApp alternative and is now available for communication with family and friends. Since instant messaging app WhatsApp announced its privacy policy in February of this year, many people have begun to explore other alternatives to the service. Many alternatives like Telegram and Signal have come to the forefront after the controversial privacy policy.
While Microsoft Team is not the first alternatives that people usually think of, Teams have been redesigned to function just like WhatsApp and in fact, it has a lot more functions than WhatsApp currently provides.
Teams is known mostly as a business or a workplace communication platform developed by Microsoft. It offers chats, video-conferencing, file storage, and app integration services. It was formerly a workplace-only app, but Microsoft has extended the service for personal use. Microsoft has announced that its Teams app is now available for personal use on both Android and iOS app stores and is completely free. Teams is also available for personal use on the web, so whatever platform users choose, they can access the latest WhatsApp alternative.
With Teams, users can chat with friends and family members just like on WhatsApp, and if friends and family are not using Teams, they can be contacted via SMS on Teams. Teams allows users to create tasks and to-do lists directly from their chats which is useful to remember family events and hangouts with friends. With Teams, users can create polls and get feedback from friends and family members. Users will also be able to schedule meetings and send out invites without leaving their chats.
Using Teams, users will be able to have a video conference with up to 300 people at the same time. This feature is totally free but the company has said that this is only temporary and is there as a feature because of the pandemic. Teams will have free 24-hour video calls for person-to-person interaction and video conference capabilities of 100 participants for a duration of 60 minutes after the pandemic comes to an end.
Teams has been packed with fun options that users can use to express themselves. There are fun GIFs and emojis that can be used during chats and calls.
With WhatsApp still caught in the chains of its privacy policy, many instant messaging alternatives are expected to come up even though the company is insisting that many other technology firms and apps already collects the information that it wants to collect.
