Why Does Facebook Use WebRTC?

What is WebRTC? How does it work? Why is it important? You may not know the answers to these questions just yet but I’m willing to bet you’ve visited a website or used a mobile app within the last day that utilizes WebRTC. Why am I willing to bet? One site, Facebook.

Put simply, WebRTC enables real-time communication (RTC) between browser clients (peers) on the web without the need to install plug-ins or third party software. Real-time communications include audio/video streaming and data sharing. WebRTC is enabled through the use of three distinct APIs(application program interface) that tell software components how to interact. The Network Stream API handles audio/video data streaming, the PeerConnection API facilitates browser-browser communication and the DataChannel API enables communication for things like real-time gaming, text, chat and file transfer.

Having an understanding of what WebRTC is and how it works is great, but what makes it important? As with anything the more useful something is the more Important or valuable it becomes. We can use Facebook as an example; Facebook is worth nearly $245 billion, when it makes use of a new technology such as WebRTC to enable audio/video calls, 600 million users make that technology (WebRTC) important. Not only does WebRTC gain incredible visibility in this use case, it also gets Facebook’s vote of confidence opening the door for many others in the arena to follow suit.

Why does WebRTC matter to us at Veraview? It just so happens our cloud based video conferencing service utilizes this very same technology making our service as easy as possible for everyone to use. Start a call and email a link, that’s it, no plugins no downloads, if you have internet access and a web browser you’re good to go. Contact us for more information and feel free to check out some of our other blogs