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Facebook on Thursday launched its video conferencing service Messenger Rooms globally, taking the feature live.
The social media giant’s answer to popular video conferencing tool Zoom, Messenger Rooms are joinable group video calls that can soon accommodate up to 50 people in a single call.
The company had announced the launch of its service last month citing the increased usage of video calls for creating the feature.
“Introducing Messenger Rooms, group video links that allow you to drop in and spend quality time with friends, family and people who share your interests,” Facebook tweeted from its official account.
According to Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp, together have over 700 million accounts that participate in voice and video calls every day, and the number of calls has more than doubled in many countries owing to the pandemic.
“In some cases, the number of group video calls has gone up by more than 10 times,” it said.
Messenger rooms will let users create a “chat room” from Messenger or Facebook and invite other users to join irrespective of them having a Facebook account.
“Rooms will soon hold up to 50 people with no time limit,” Facebook said in an official blog post.
Facebook users can also directly create and share a Messenger room from Groups and Events, the company had said earlier this week. So “it’s easy for people to drop by.”
The feature is similar to a group chat version of a Facebook or Instagram Live.
“If your friends or communities create rooms that are open to you, you’ll see them on Facebook so you can find things to do and people to hang out with. When you’re invited to a room, you can join from your phone or computer — no need to download anything to get started,” Facebook had said.
Facebook is currently rolling out the feature globally in a staged manner. The company, it is the announcement for the feature had said that it will also look into creating shortcuts for messenger Rooms on its other services such as Instagram and WhatsApp.
According to a recent report by WABetaInfo , Facebook is working on creating a shortcut for Messenger Rooms for WhatsApp web. However, the feature is still under development.
Based on the screenshots shared within the report, users will be able to see a shortcut for Messenger Rooms on WhatsApp’s main menu as well as within a particular chat alongside other shortcuts such as contacts and gallery.
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