Messenger Rooms was first announced as “Rooms” in a limited rollout at the end of April.

When the room goes “Live”, participants will have to opt-in to be a part of it, and they can also leave before it starts to broadcast. The difference now is that those calls will essentially be carried out on a stage, seen by as many as would have seen a Live broadcast posted by that host. The social network has announced that people using Messenger Rooms - the video chat software that lets people create calls with up to 50 people via a link (no Facebook or Messenger account required to join the call) - can now choose to broadcast that Rooms chat to Live, the feature in Facebook that lets people broadcast directly through Groups, Pages and in timelines via your Profile.įacebook Rooms via Live will still come with controls for the call host: the limit is 50 people, users need a link to join, and the moderator/call host can still remove people if needed. Today Facebook added in a new feature to its own contribution to the video chat landscape that should lead, if not immediately to more usage, more engagement when Messenger Rooms does get used. No one really talks about “ Teamsing up” (“ Skyping,” perhaps?), or “ Hangoutsing” or “ Meeting“, or indeed “ Roomsing.” But many people talk about Zooming, even when they’re not using Zoom to do it.

Zoom has run away with the prize in the last few months for becoming the video calling platform of choice for people confined to their homes, whether they are making work calls or friend calls.

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