Just a quick one this week, with it being the bank holiday – the boys want to go out on a bike ride today, and it’s lovely weather for it.
But there’s a new feature that’s popped up on Facebook that I wanted to tell you about first.
What are these “Room” things that have appeared on my Facebook?
If you use Facebook, you might have noticed a change to the website or your Facebook app last week. Along the top of your News Feed, things called “Rooms” have appeared, and you’ve got the option to create one of your own. So what are they all about?
Well – when you get right down to it, this is just a new way to make a group video call on Facebook Messenger. You’ve always been able to make calls to more than person at once on the Facebook Messenger app, but the Rooms feature gives you a few more options.
The biggest differences are:
- Instead of choosing the people you want to call and then calling them all at once, you create a “room” – basically start a call – and decide who is allowed to join it. People can join in whenever they like.
- You can also create a link – like a web address – directly to your “room” so that people who aren’t your Facebook friend can join the call too. All they need is to have the link.
- The default is that any of your Facebook friends can join the call if they want to, but you can choose to invite specific people instead if you prefer.
Basically, it’s Facebook’s answer to Zoom – and it’s designed to be used for the same sort of thing. It could work well for online club meetings, or as the digital equivalent of an “open house” birthday party. I don’t think I’ll bother with it myself, though.
Anyway, as I said – I just wanted to let you know what it was, since Facebook never tell you about these things themselves! Feel free to ignore it if you want, or give it a try if you think it might be useful.
Just make sure you decide who you want to be able to join in the call before you start! If you’re happy for any of your Facebook friends to join in, then you can just leave the settings as they are. Otherwise, make sure you change the privacy settings to just invite specific people.
Right – I’m off now. Have a lovely bank holiday.
Hi Julie,
Just wanted to thank you for Monday’s email. I hadn’t heard about facebook rooms prior to that. It even took me a while to find where it was on the page. On the same evening, I received a Facecrooks.com email also informing about what data facebook is going to gather from its users!
I am very happy to have had information from both you and them. Thanks again,
Heather Kroiter