Facebook Rooms was rolled out in the UK this last week, and we’ve already seem some great sure over the past few days. It seems they’ll be popular, and hopefully, here to stay.
We already know that Facebook wanted to roll out this feature in the wake of the world pandemic, as a way of connecting people digitally. Zoom was perhaps already stepping into this gap massively well, but of course Facebook wanted in on the action.
Although they own WhatsApp too, there was a limit of only 4 phones per call (although since changed to 8), so it was a natural step to use Facebook (and now Instagram) for this new feature.
The new Facebook Rooms can be created from in your Facebook account, or in the Messenger app. Anyone can join the call, even if they don’t have an account (which will be a huge benefit to Facebook we’re sure). With no limit (unlike Zoom), and up to 50 people per room, is this where a lot of networking will start happening?
Creating Rooms
Creating a room is really easy – of course! It’s what Facebook is good at.
At the top of your feed, on the app or desktop you’ll see the “Create Room” option, or “Rooms”.
And in great Facebook style – it’s super simple. When you click on the Room activity, you’ve got a whole range of options, all working towards that important ‘user experience’. The rooms can be for invite only (and providing a link), or for all of your friends to join in. We think the latter is the great one during the pandemic, you can just sit down in Facebook and open up a public room for any of your friends to join.
Once you’ve started your room, if it’s open to everyone, it’ll pop up on the top of your feed/your friends feed for people to join. A bit similar to how Stories work.
What do we think?
Well, personally, a brilliant move by Facebook. Over the past 8 weeks in the UK we’ve all been scratching heads on how we can meet up online. Using Teams, Hangouts, Zoom… but for the most part, your friends ARE all on Facebook. This is just another feature to the platform to help build communities, keep communities going and of course, keep us there.
In terms of business, it’s also another way that using your personal profile for business networking can help. It’s long been something on our radar, how to use your personal profile on Facebook perhaps in a “LinkedIn style”. Having this rooms option for networking with your clients and potential clients, as well as being able to create rooms in groups too.
Top tip: anyone can create a room in groups, so if you’re an admin and you want to limit this, make sure you change your settings.