Facebook’s Next Big Thing: Bringing Back That AOL Chatroom Feeling

Consumerist ^ | 23 October 2014 | Kate Cox

[Lorianne]

A few weeks ago, we all heard that Facebook — the site where your real name and offline social connections are meant to rule supreme — was planning to launch an app that supported anonymous use. Today, Facebook announced their new product for real… and it sounds an awful lot like a phone-focused version of the chat rooms and message boards AOL brought into our living rooms 20 years ago.

The new app is called Rooms, and in a sense, it does exactly what it sounds like, GigaOm reports: users can create chatrooms on a theme and then invite others to participate.

Of course, it’s now 2014, not 1993, and times have changed. Plenty of other discussion forums have sprung up in that time, and Rooms, says GigaOm, takes cues from them, too. Room founders can determine their room’s look, feel, and rules and then invite others to join. And the streams of conversation can include images, sounds, and videos, because nobody wants to live in a world where you can’t answer a question with exactly the right *.gif.

Room links are shared by QR code, because long URLs are a pain in the butt on mobile devices. If someone shares the QR code more widely — say on Twitter or even on Facebook — then a room can attract a wide audience and become a major chattering hub. If the codes are kept private, then your book club can theoretically use the room without any random strangers jumping in.

[CatherineofAragon]

I’ll bet that one was fun, too.

[rarestia]

Reminds me of the old days of Mirc chat and Usenet newsgroups. Good times...good times.

Late night EFnet chats and warez FTPs, right? Or even better, how about LoRD and Usuper on dial-up BBSes?

[Wuli]

If this is anything like the new Facebook messenger App, it is anything but private. The disclaimer for the messenger App acknowledges that by running it Facebook gets unlimited access of its own to ANYTHING on your smartphone - contacts, data, images, stored call logs, EVERYTHING.