A Much Needed Zoom Alternative
The ongoing pandemic has pushed every major tech company to upgrade its capabilities with a video calling feature. While many players like Zoom, Cisco’s WebEx, GoToMeeting, etc are pre-existing, Google, Microsoft, etc have focused on popularising their apps alongside. One such big player focus on this growing space is Facebook. The world’s largest social media platform has announced its plans for introducing a specific video calling feature last month. Though the Messenger and WhatsApp are widely used for video calling, they’re still limited. Thus, Facebook planned to launch a specific service, that’s more or like matching Zoom’s purpose. And it’s here – Messenger Rooms. This feature is now available for North America, Mexico, and Canada, and will be rolling out to other countries soon. Facebook insisted on this feature to be more for social interaction rather than professional meetings. So, it made this service more lenient with no making up for schedules, no time limit of conferencing, and non-requirement of Facebook account to join a room.
What Can Be Done?
Any user can create a room and pass the link to let others join, and being the admin, he/she can take actions like kicking out annoying people and locking the room for restricting new entrants. Facebook further announced that it’s even commercializing Facebook Live for helping content creators. Now, artists or lectures can stream their live content for a price that followers have to pay if interested to view. While Facebook has increased the limit of WhatsApp’s video calling to 8 users last month, it’s even trying to bring such room features in WhatsApp and Instagram too. And though Facebook is caught up with many serious privacy litigations, the new feature, Messenger Rooms chats aren’t end-to-end encrypted!
