Good news for old school fans out there, Facebook is planning to revive the public chat rooms. Before the social media boom, netizens used to communicate in public chat rooms to discuss common topics and interests. Back then, users can chat to strangers with full anonymity using a fancy usernames.
According to Digital Trends, this feature was already tested in Facebook's Messenger iOS app but it was not officially launched yet. The codes were concealed in the source code of the said app which highly indicate the rumored new chat room feature. The said upcoming feature is unofficially named as "Rooms". Apparently, a user can either take part in the conversations in a room or create his own room. It also already has a logo with two white circles overlapping in a blue background.
This move is actually not surprising coming from Facebook. Facebook did develop a stand-alone chat room app way back in 2014, however it never gained popularity to users, especially competing to Facebook's very own Messenger app. It was eventually terminated in 2015.
Facebook recently did an experiment on Facebook's group chats wherein they tested if users will participate in creating fancy usernames replacing their Facebook name in the chat. So as it turned out, it went well, hinting that the newly created feature might also allow users to create fancy usernames as they please.
Facebook developers did not confirm the feature however they tipped off some codes indicating the its possibility. "We don't have any comment on this speculation," TechCrunch quoted Facebook developer Chris Messina as saying. However, there are some screenshots of the excavated Messenger code about "Rooms:" Based on the codes, it previewed some of the welcome and instructional lines from the app.
Do you agree that Facebook should release this reminiscent chat room in Messenger?
