Facebook testing anonymous group chat feature ‘Rooms’ in select countries

Though Facebook shut its semi-anonymous social networking app called ‘Rooms’ within a year of its launch, Mark Zuckerberg’s team hasn’t given up on the feature completely.

According to a TechCrunch report, Facebook is testing the integration of a new 'Rooms' feature in its Messenger chat app currently available only in Australia and Canada.

The partial roll out is aimed at testing how Facebook’s billion-user-strong Messenger platform could be leveraged to encourage users towards a public room-style chat feature.

Apparently, there had been sightings of code segments related to the said feature in the messaging app previously but there was no confirmation about the complete functionality and availability of the same. Facebook then stated that it was just a small test and Room users have the functionality to create their own interest-based rooms, share group links, invite members, configure notifications and a lot more.

The anonymous messaging app is now being expanded to Australia and Canada, according to Australian publication The Courier Mail, that describes Rooms as “a bulletin board-style, real-time messaging feature” which is different from groups and has been designed to allow users to exchange messages, photos, links and any other info with strangers on a specific topic.

Facebook Messenger product manager Drew Moxon told the publication that the new chat feature is designed to facilitate conversations about different topics with strangers unlike the group chats where topics of common interests are only discussed.

“Group chats today are focused on people you know — friends and family — and what we’ve found by talking to users is there’s a lot of need for conversations about specific topics. This will be for topic-based conversations and so people can talk with others they may not know,” said Moxon.

There would be two kinds of rooms- one Public with conversation ranging from any new tech launch event to some old Meme on the internet. The other functionality would be to set Rooms as private, to join which you’ll be required to be approved by an administrator.