Facebook officially releases its 50-person ‘Messenger Rooms’ alternative to Zoom

Last month, Facebook unveiled its “Messenger Rooms” alternative to Zoom and Group FaceTime, and released it to a small subset of users. Now, Facebook has announced that Messenger Rooms is available to everyone.

Facebook’s blog post today explains more about how the Messenger Room platform works:

You can start and share rooms on Facebook through News Feed, Groups and Events, so it’s easy for you to drop by whenever you want. You can choose who can see and join your room or remove people from your room and lock the room if you don’t want anyone else to join.

Your “Room” will appear at the top of the News Feed or through notifications. Facebook emphasizes that you have full control over who joins your Room, whether it be anyone from your Friends list or only those with whom you share the link.

If your friends or communities create rooms that are open to you, you’ll see them on Facebook so you can find things to do and people to hang out with. When you’re invited to a room, you can join from your phone or computer — no need to download anything to get started.

We built Rooms with privacy and safety top of mind so you can feel comfortable connecting with your friends, family, and communities. We don’t view or listen to your calls, and the person who creates the room controls who can join, who sees the room, and if the room is locked or unlocked to new guests. The room creator must be present in order for the call to begin, and the creator can remove guests at any time.

There are still some limitations despite today’s broader release. For instance, only Facebook users in North America can create a Messenger Room from Facebook itself; other countries will be limited to only creating Rooms from the Messenger app.

You can get started by downloading the Facebook app and Messenger app from the App Store. You can also try the feature in the Facebook Messenger app on macOS.