Facebook Messenger Rooms wants to be the new Zoom
Rooms will give you the tiled view that helped make Zoom so popular. (Facebook Rooms/)Since Facebook added video chat to Instagram back in 2018, Facebook has offered its users numerous ways to carry out real-time face-to-face interactions. By that point, almost every corner of the Facebook world—including Messenger and WhatsApp—offered some kind of video chat option. When social distancing began, however, users flocked to Zoom for their group chats—it turns out people wanted work-style conference calls with video. That’s one of the few video calling corners Facebook hadn’t yet explored. Last week, however, Mark Zuckerberg introduced Facebook Messenger Rooms. Like Zoom, it allows large groups of people—the new Rooms feature allows up to 50 participants at a time—to have a large meeting. Unlike Zoom, however, there’s no time limit for free accounts. Facebook also hopes people will use Rooms more casually. When users log into their Facebook feeds, they’ll see...