Stuck at home!! And missing the face-to-face interaction with friends and family, then here comes the good news for you!! Facebook releases a new House party-like feature called Messenger Rooms by advancing its video chat capabilities.
“What makes Room unique, compared to regular Messenger video chats, is their spontaneous nature”
“Spending time with each other should be spontaneous, not strained,” – said Facebook in an announcement.
Messenger Room Features:
Here we listed out some features of the Messenger Room, they are
- Users can create their rooms without making a call each other directly.
- This helps them to feel more comfortable when compared to standard video calls.
- Users can create a room and share a link to it with whoever they wish.
- Other users can choose to join the room at any point in time.
- Users can join when the room opens, or drop in while the chat is already happening.
Moreover, you don’t have to worry about whether the time is right for a video call.
“Host celebrations, gather a book club or just hang out on the couch with friends. You don’t need to call someone and hope it’s a good time or check everyone’s calendar first.”-says Facebook newsroom.
Steps for Creating a Room chat:
Facebook have mentioned some steps to be followed for creating a room chat, they are
Step 1: Open the Messenger app.
Step 2: Tap the People tab at the bottom right of the screen.
Step 3: Tap Create a Room, and select the people who you want to join.
How to use the Chat Rooms?
Users can create their own Room however they wish, but Facebook has given some recommendations on the usage, they are as follows
- Users can start and share rooms on their Facebook account either through the news feed, in a group, or on an event page.
- Creating a room gives users full control over who can see and join it.
- If a room is created in a group or an event page, then it will be available to everyone in that group or event by default.
- The creator of the room can remove other user if needed, or lock it so no extra participants can join into the chat.
How to Join a Messenger Room?
Here we have rolled out some steps for joining a messenger room they are,
Step 1: People will see some list of rooms in their news feed, when they are shared by their friends or members of groups they belong to.
Step 2: Users can also send direct invites for others to join a room.
Step 3: Rooms can be joined either on mobile or desktop, and there is no additional app to download.
Step 4: People can join even without having a Facebook account, as long as they have been sent an invite link.
The new feature will be available in some countries by this week and will be rolling out into the rest of the world in the following weeks. Facebook also says it will soon carry out ways to join directly from Instagram DM, WhatsApp and Portal also.
Video Feature is not temporary:
Due to this COVID-19 Pandemic, there has been a considerable increase in usage for real-time video on Facebook.
Additionally, More than 700 million accounts engage in video calls each day across WhatsApp and Messenger.
“When you have 700 million people a day doing something — and have been even before this started for some period — that’s not just a temporary thing.The trend was already going in that direction. And I think that this period will accelerate that permanently by a few years.”-said Mark Zuckerberg.
Chat Privacy:
Facebook ensures users their chats are secure, in many separate blog post about the privacy of Messenger Rooms.
“Regardless of whether you use Rooms through your Facebook account or join as a guest, we don’t watch or listen to your audio or video calls.”-said Facebook newsroom.
Facebook is also working with its security teams to make the Messenger Rooms links difficult for hackers to hack.
“Our room links have a string of random characters and digits at the end, with numbers and letters in different cases.This makes it challenging for hackers to guess the exact combination of characters, and a new link is generated every time you create a room.”-said Facebook News Room.
Additionally, hackers have already exploited the Zoom features late, but Facebook is not taking any chances with their security of Rooms.
If you want to know more about these features then please do visit Facebook Newsroom for their latest updates.
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Informative and very well explained.