A new way to spend time with friends, family and fellow group members.
People are turning to technology and online community to connect more than ever. To help people engage and come together, today we’re launching Messenger Rooms, a new way to spend time with friends, family and fellow group members. Messenger Rooms makes hanging out easy with joinable video links; private with extensive user controls; and fun with filters, games and screen-sharing.
Admins and members can create a Room right from the Facebook Groups and Events they belong to, and host up to 50 people on a Messenger video call for as long as they want. Members can also add link sharing to make it easier to invite more people to their room, including people who aren’t your friends, a member of the group or who don’t have Facebook or Messenger.
How it works: Rooms in Groups
Members and admins can create a Room from the Groups composer. The group composer will show active Groups focused chats that people can join. There can be many chat rooms per individual group. Rooms that already include 50 people will not be able to add any additional group members, including admins.
Admins
Admins have the ability to allow Messenger Rooms within their group, or make Rooms “admin only” so only admins can create but anyone can join. Or allow any person within the group to create a room. To help admins keep their communities safe, admins will have the ability to delete any video chat room.
If a group has post approvals on, Admins will be the only ones who can create a Room, unless the admin changes the setting. For groups that don’t have post approvals on, the default will be anyone in the group can create a Room.
How it works: Rooms in Events
To help people connect more easily and accurately, we’re starting to roll out the ability to mark a Facebook Event as an “Online Event.”
To help people engage more deeply when they attend an Online Event, we’re also integrating our new Rooms feature. This allows people to invite friends, family, classmates and colleagues to hang out with anyone from anywhere through easy to share and join video chat links.
Rooms will only be available for Private Online Events, and there is a limit of 50 people who can join the Room.
Messenger Rooms in Groups and Events is available on iOS, Android, and desktop.
Returning: Live With
People are turning to Facebook Live for workout classes, cooking lessons, faith services and more. We heard from our community that the ability to co-broadcast with another person in their Facebook Live videos would be especially useful during this time, so we are bringing back Live With and will introduce new features in the coming weeks to make the experience more interactive. Live With lets you invite another person into your Facebook Live broadcast, no matter where they are in the world. Bring on a guest speaker, interview an expert or perform with a friend. You can access this feature before or during your broadcast, simply by tapping the red “LIVE” button at the top left of your screen, and selecting the person you want to invite.
Live With is available on iOS, Android, and desktop.
Source: facebook.com
