Yowie, the popular video chat service that brings people closer to the stars, announced their new group video chat offering.  They’re competing against Skype, Google Hangouts and Tiny Chat with this latest update.  Yowie is known for connecting fans with celebrity chat hosts such as Colin Farrell, Amy Poehler, Interpol and presidential hopeful Gary Johnson.

“By working with some of the biggest names in entertainment over the past year, we’ve learned that people with similar offline interests are looking to authentically connect online,” said Yowie founder and president Jamie Snider. “With the new Yowie, we’re making it simple and safe to not just video chat with a celebrity, but with anyone around almost any topic.”

Yowie combines powerful social interactions and a controlled environment for video chat.  There’s a few aspects Yowie hopes will help it stand out from the growing crowd of video chat services, including a reputation scoring system, support for multimedia content (which Skype mobile is now getting around to), categorized topics and search (your group convos can be tagged), and “experience points.”

Experience points operate around a rewards system, giving you badges for site activity.  You can also make your group chats public or private, and last but not least, this service is all free for users, and requires no downloads.

Some other new features include:

• Embed the full group chat experience on any Internet destination.
• A Facebook application for group video chatting that mirrors the vast majority of Yowie’s on-site functionality.
• Send a recorded video invite to your Facebook friends to join you in a chat room.
• Custom room skinning for chat room sponsors such as fan clubs or meet up groups.

Yowie has hosted more than a thousand chats with actors, athletes, comedians, musicians and politicians since it launched in 2010.  Yowie will continue to offer their celebrity chats that includes premium features like archived clips, live question queues with participant voting and escalation, and more.

IM industry gets chatty

Just like hanging out with friends, the more people involved in a group chat means more fun for all.  As years pass, everyone changes, our lives change, we move and settle in different locations and the friends we used to hangout with are thousands of miles away now.  It’s not that easy to get together with friends anymore, even relatives.  So group video chat makes our lives easier; it makes you feel like nothing changed.

Skype upped their mobile with the release of version 2.6 for Android, which allows users to send photos and videos and also boasts of improved video quality in  mobile devices with NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 chipset, such as Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Motorola XOOM and Acer Iconia Tablet with HTC Amaze 4G and Motorola DROID RAZR soon to be added to the list.  Anyone with an Android device running at 2.2 Froyo and above can Skype video call for free.

Microsoft is not far behind as they released Lync 2010 for Android.  The Lync app allows users to see which of their colleagues are online in real-time, and join a conference call without needing passwords or special numbers.  The app is capable of allowing users to forward calls to their Enterprise Voice number.

“Lync 2010 for Android extends the power of Lync to your mobile device – including rich presence, instant messaging, audio conferencing, and calling features from a single, easy-to-use interface,” Microsoft said.

It’s important to note that Microsoft Lync 2010 for Android requires a Lync Server or Office365/Lync Online account and will not work without it. If you are unsure about your account status, check with your IT department.

Yahoo! Hub also recently released an free app for the Android platform.  It offers single and group messaging with the ability to add participants to a conversation mid-stream.

Hub also allows users to send free text messages, even to people on other platforms, and with no requirement that the recipient install the app. The Yahoo app supports free SMS in Canada, Indonesia, India, Kuwait, Malaysia, Philippines, Pakistan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.  Those receiving messages from people using Hub might be charged by their carriers.