Facebook Messenger Rooms

Facebook Messenger Rooms, also as Messenger Rooms is a new feature of Facebook Messenger to let users go video conferencing. This feature has been claimed by Facebook to take on Zoom. It allows users to add up to 50 people at a time. People can join a meeting anytime during the meeting which simplifies the uses of Zoom having less control in the meeting.[1][2][3]

Facebook Messenger Rooms
Messenger Rooms
Screenshot
Screenshot of Messenger Rooms group call
Developer(s)Facebook
Initial releaseApril 24, 2020 (2020-04-24)
Operating systemWeb, Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, Mac
TypeVideoconferencing, VoIP, and Instant messaging
LicenseFreeware
WebsiteMessenger.com/rooms

History

Back in 2014, Facebook first introduced a stand-alone application named Rooms to let users create places for users into and invite others who are into those too and this was first time Facebook lets users be anonymous with their names.[4] It had to shutdown on December 2015.[5] But in April 2020, Facebook revealed video conferencing features named after this during the COVID-19 pandemic. When people were staying home due to the spread of COVID-19, then video conferencing started increasing not just for business uses, also for personal. People started hanging up in social media where as they were spending time in real. Widely used video conferencing was limited mostly on Zoom.[6] Then Facebook showed up with Messenger Rooms having facilities where Zoom limited those for only premium users.[2]

Policies and security

Messenger Rooms has less security and no time limit by default where Zoom has limitation of 40 minutes on a group call for more than two people. Unlike Zoom and WhatsApp, Messenger Rooms has limit of 50 participant at any time without any duration limit. But unlike Zoom, it doesn't use end-to-end encryption for group calling.[7] When a room is going on, friends can see it in the top of news feed with participants name. One can also lock a Room so that no new participants can join, remove someone or can chose whom to invite or stay.[5]

Facilities

Facebook wishes to facilitate this not just for Messenger, also for WhatsApp, Instagram Direct, other portals. Anyone can join from any of these portal even without having signed in. Facebook will only ask them to provide some basic information so that the other users can identify one.[5][8]

In the face of COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, while people were stuck in rooms and had to process their work from home, Zoom started being used widely. Then Facebook facilitated this group chatting feature with less control in the meeting and with some more advantages like on-meeting playing games, sharing screen and others. People from worldwide started using video conferencing from personal to business, class, works and others. Facebook Messenger Rooms suppose to be used worldwide in this COVID-19 situation.[6]

gollark: I have heard bad things about wikitext parsing.
gollark: Well, as of now it just uses a simple Wikipedia API parameter and doesn't actually do parsing.
gollark: It *could* actually be a really good dataset for teaching ML stuff conversation, apart from all the various horrible privacy (and quality) problems.
gollark: Their CDN is images mostly so it would be annoying to analyze, I'd mostly want message text.
gollark: I guess I'd only have to afford them for a bit until I can dump all their data onto my 500GB backup disk.

References
  1. Staff (2020-04-25). "Facebook Messenger Rooms launched, supports 50 people video calls". BGR India. Retrieved 2020-08-04.
  2. "Facebook launches Messenger Rooms, group calls for up to 50 people with no time limit". VentureBeat. 2020-04-24. Retrieved 2020-08-04.
  3. Rodriguez, Salvador (2020-07-23). "Facebook aims for Zoom by letting users live broadcast large video meetings". CNBC. Retrieved 2020-07-30.
  4. "Facebook Launches Pseudonymous App "Rooms" That Lets You Create Forums About Any Topic". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  5. "Introducing Rooms". About Facebook. 2014-10-23. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  6. "Facebook Allows Users to Broadcast Live Large Video Calls". NDTV Gadgets 360. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  7. "Facebook Messenger Rooms is a mix of Houseparty and Zoom; makes video calls fun". The Indian Express. 2020-05-18. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  8. "Introducing Messenger Rooms and More Ways to Connect When You're Apart". About Facebook. 2020-04-24. Retrieved 2020-08-11.


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