It turns out that the rumored app that Facebook has been working on isn’t an anonymous chat app, but rather a platform that lets you create your own chat room right on your iPhone.
Basically, Rooms is an iPhone app — soon coming to Android — that lets you make tiny message boards to post photos, videos, and text to. You’ll create a different username and identity for each Room you create or visit, and you’ll let other people join via a QR code you can generate and share via the internet or in real life.
Head developer Josh Miller told The Verge, “We’re not trying to build the next Snapchat — we’re trying to build the next WordPress.”
When you create a Room, you’ll be able to do all sorts of cool message board-style things, like set moderators, pin posts to the top of the (usually chronological) message stream, set ground rules for the chat in the room, and even kick out folks who don’t act nice. You’re able to set a wallpaper and a theme, and even alter the “Like” button at the bottom of the posts.
Your identity can be protected, and can change from room to room. You control your username and how you present yourself in each Room. This seems to be in direct opposition to Facebook’s typical push to get all your info, and identify you.
Rooms isn’t connected to Facebook, however, and won’t bug you (so far) to spam your chat room to all your Facebook friends, or the like. There are no discovery features in the Rooms app as of now, which should be refreshing.
The QR code process of joining Rooms is fascinating, as well. When you send your Room’s QR code, you can text it to a friend, who saves the texted image to their camera roll. When Rooms opens on their device, it asks for permission and then scans their photos for QR code invites, and adds them to your room. You can also just have them take a picture of the QR code on your iPhone, too. It’s all very fun.
Imagine going to your yoga studio and finding a discussion room about Bikram techniques that you can just scan from your iPhone, or hanging out at the comic shop and joining a discussion about which Flash is better, Wally West or Barry Allen?
The best part is that you can do these things now with Rooms on the go. It’s like a real-world, mobile IRC in your pocket, without being a Facebook front.
“You can’t connect a Facebook account. We don’t ask for address book access. We don’t ask for names,” said Miller, likening the new app to Netscape, or WordPress: it’s a platform, not a service.
Via: The Verge
Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he’ll really appreciate it.
3 responses to “Facebook reinvents the chat room with Rooms for iOS”
This is dumb. Chat rooms are so last decade.
It’s not.
Many people today use Whatsapp groups as a way to do most of the things this app proposes. But not only Whatsapp is limited in features, it also doesn’t provide the privacy you can get on Rooms.
The only problem that might happen with Rooms are trolls and bad intentioned people who might bring some disruption to a Room. However, with moderators I think this can be tamable in most cases too.
You really think there “might” be problem with “trolls and bad intentioned people”?
Chat rooms are little more than chaotic cacophony.