Facebook has announced a new video calling service called Messenger Rooms. Why? You ask.

Well, in the recent past, Zoom has been the defacto video calling service for professional purposes and also for the fun stuff (we’ve even seen people get married on Zoom).

Since most of the world is trying their best to stay at home, people have turned to video calling apps to stay connected. Messenger Rooms will work similarly to Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet.

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The basics are that it will help you connect with your friends and family in an easy way. Allowing up to 50 people to participate in one video call for whatever purpose.

The new Facebook product posses a direct threat to Zoom, which has been the clear winner in the video conferencing war. However, Zoom has been on the receiving end of privacy issues and Facebook hopes that their new service will offer a proper alternative to users.

Facebook has also reported a surge in users over the months of March and April. The company hopes that Messenger Rooms will capture this new audience and make the product a success.

While making the announcement, Facebook CEO Marck Zuckerberg said that Messenger Rooms will be available to everyone and not just Facebook users.

To start a video conference, the host simply creates the call through the Messenger app and then sends a link to all intended participants and they will be able to join in.

Facebook did clarify that the Messenger app will not be required to participate in the video call, as long as someone has the invitation link, they will be able to join in the call.

Some of the features that Messenger Rooms has at launch include:

• No time limits
• AR filters
• 360-degrees virtual backgrounds
• Privacy controls for the host to make the call private and also kick out users

Messenger Rooms is available immediately to all users. If you can’t see the feature yet, be patient since it is an incremental rollout.

Other announcements that were made include the increasing of WhatsApp group limits from 4 participants to 8, virtual dates on Facebook dating through video calls and other video calling improvements.