Facebook Messenger Rooms Global Rollout Merges Social Networking, Video Calls To Take On Zoom

| Published: Saturday, May 16, 2020, 10:37 [IST]

Video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Google Duo, Skype, and others have become commonly associated with everyday life, both personally and professionally since the lockdown. A new player has entered to compete, namely, Facebook Messenger Rooms, which is a group video chat service, supporting video calls up to 50 participants without a time limit for a call.

Facebook has been working on creating a rival for various platforms including TikTok with Facebook Lasso. With the new Messengers Room, Facebook hopes to grab a slice of the market from Zoom.

Facebook Messenger Rooms Features

Facebook Messenger Rooms comes with a bunch of new features that merges social networking and video conferencing. It works like any other video conferencing platform, requiring a friend to create a room and invite other participants or friends. For now, users can start a call from the Facebook Messenger app and even send invites to users, even to those who don't have a Facebook account.

What's more, Messenger Rooms integrates with Instagram, allowing users to answer calls via Instagram Direct Messages as well. Facebook-owned platforms like WhatsApp and Portal will also be linked to make and answer Messenger Rooms calls. This seamlessly integrates Facebook's wide network into one large video conferencing platform.

Facebook Messenger Rooms Vs Zoom

We always knew that Zoom was never meant to be a social networking site. The mounting privacy concerns on the platform was already limiting its user base. With Facebook Messenger Rooms in the picture now, the competition is sure to spike. However, Facebook has its own set of privacy and security concerns.

At the same time, Facebook is ensuring that the video calls on Messenger Rooms are end-to-end-encrypted. A similar end-to-encryption is available on Zoom, but only for paid users, making it difficult for free users.

In recent times, it's pretty obvious that video conferencing services have spiked in usage (nearly 1,000 percent in recent weeks). Facebook could potentially have a higher success rate as it already has a large social networking user base. That being said, the Messenger Rooms still doesn't have screen sharing and other features available on Zoom, which could mean that a large part of the enterprise user base could keep out of Messenger Rooms.