Windows 10: Facebook enhances Messenger Rooms experience with new features

Brink · Aug 26, 2020

Today, weâre announcing new features to enhance your experience in Messenger Rooms, joinable group video calls that make it easy to spend quality time with friends, loved ones and people who share your interests.

Personalize your Room

In addition to Messengerâs AR effects, like immersive 360-degree backgrounds and mood lighting filters, we are starting to roll out a new way to personalize your room and video chats on mobile. We are introducing the ability to customize your background with your own photos so you can now video chat from your favorite sunset. You could even customize your background with a funny home video.

Create, Join and Manage Rooms within Messenger

Weâre also rolling out a completely new and easier way to create and discover Rooms within Messenger on mobile â you can now create, share, manage and drop by a room all within your app. Within Messenger, youâll be able to:

Discover Rooms: Rooms that you have been invited to will show up at the top of your Chats tab in your Inbox.

Create Rooms: Ability to create a room is front and center in your Chats tab.

Edit Rooms: You can create a room with a default, suggested or custom activity, set a future start date and customize your audience selection.

Manage Rooms: View, join, and edit the rooms you have created. You can also invite more people to a scheduled room and delete a room you donât want to be active anymore.

Share Rooms: Send notifications to ensure your invited friends donât miss out.

Click to expand...

Source: Messenger Enhances Your Rooms Experience with New Features – Messenger News

:)

Brink · Aug 26, 2020

A New Way to Go Live on Facebook From Messenger Rooms

Today, we’re introducing a new way to broadcast live to Facebook from Messenger Rooms. Turning your room into a Facebook Live broadcast makes it easy to go live with up to 50 people. Whether you’re hosting a book club with friends, interviewing a panel of experts, teaching a fitness class, or broadcasting with your friends for fun, going live from a room lets you have more interactive broadcasts with audiences of any size.

From Rooms to Live

People are turning to Facebook Live more than ever to stay connected. Live broadcasts from Pages doubled in June 2020 compared to the same time last year, largely attributed to broadcasts since March 2020. From artists raising money for efforts they care about and local zoos hosting daily safari adventures, to congregations coming together for worship and couples exchanging vows, people are finding creative ways to connect through Facebook Live.

Messenger Rooms are joinable group video calls that make it easy to spend quality time with friends, loved ones and people who share your interests. Create a room that can go live right from Facebook or Messenger web, and invite anyone to join, even if they don’t have a Facebook account. As a room creator, you can broadcast your room to a Profile, Page or Group, and invite people to tune in. By bringing Messenger Rooms and Facebook Live together, we’re unlocking new ways for people to connect and create content even while they’re apart.

The room creator controls the live broadcast, including where the room is shared on Facebook, who can view the broadcast and who’s invited to participate. All the room participants will receive a notification inviting them to join the live broadcast and will have to opt-in to participate. They can also choose to leave the room before it goes live.

The room creator can add or remove participants from the live broadcast at any time and room participants can leave the live broadcast at any time. Room creators can also lock and unlock a room during the live broadcast.

Keeping People Safe

When a room creator chooses to go Live, the broadcast is shared to Facebook and people outside the room may see what’s happening in the room based on the audience and where the room is shared on Facebook. And we encourage viewers to report any live video that they believe violates our Community Standards.

As with other Facebook Live videos, we may collect and review audio and video from the broadcast to make sure it follows our Community Standards.

Looking Ahead

This feature is rolling out in some countries on Facebook and Messenger web starting today, and will soon expand to all countries where Messenger Rooms is available as well as to the Facebook and Messenger mobile app and Messenger desktop app. And we’ll continue to add enhancements over the coming months. We’re excited to see the creative ways people will broadcast with this feature.
Click to expand...

Source: A New Way to Go Live on Facebook From Messenger Rooms – Messenger News

Brink · Aug 26, 2020

Facebook Introducing Messenger Rooms and More Ways to Connect

Facebook’s products have always been about connecting people. Over the years we’ve focused on how to help people feel present with one another even when they’re not in the same place. Today, video helps most of us bridge the distance. Tomorrow, we’ll be turning to more immersive platforms like AR and VR.

Lately Facebook has felt the demand for real-time video. Between WhatsApp and Messenger, more than 700 million accounts participate in calls every day. In many countries, video calling on Messenger and WhatsApp more than doubled, and views of Facebook Live and Instagram Live videos increased significantly in March. But there’s more to do to make real-time feel real.

Spending time with each other should be spontaneous, not strained. So to help people feel like they’re together, even when they are — or have to be — physically apart, we’re announcing features across our products that make video chat and live video easier and more natural.

Introducing Messenger Rooms

Messenger Rooms make it easy to spend quality time with friends, loved ones and people who share your interests. Create a room right from Messenger or Facebook, and invite anyone to join your video call, even if they don’t have a Facebook account. Rooms will soon hold up to 50 people with no time limit.

Host celebrations, gather a book club or just hang out on the couch with friends. You don’t need to call someone and hope it’s a good time or check everyone’s calendar first. You can start and share rooms on Facebook through News Feed, Groups and Events, so it’s easy for people to drop by. Soon we’ll add ways to create rooms from Instagram Direct, WhatsApp and Portal, too.

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. If you have the Messenger app, you can play with AR effects like bunny ears, and new AI-powered features like immersive 360 backgrounds and mood lighting.

When you create a room, you choose who can see and join it. You can remove people from the call and lock a room if you don’t want anyone else to enter. Read more about the controls you have and how we built Rooms with privacy and security in mind.

Messenger Rooms is rolling out in some countries this week and will expand to the rest of the world in coming weeks.

Expanding WhatsApp Group Calls

WhatsApp calls are another way to stay in touch. Soon you’ll be able to have group voice and video calls with up to eight people on WhatsApp. As before, these calls are secured with end-to-end encryption so no one else can view or listen to your private conversation, not even WhatsApp.

New Live Video Features for Facebook, Instagram and Portal

People are turning to Facebook Live and Instagram Live for workout classes, cooking lessons, faith services and more, so we’re adding features to make them even more useful.

On Facebook…

We’re bringing back Live With so you can add another person into your live video, no matter where they are in the world. Bring on a guest speaker, interview an expert or perform with a friend.

You’ll be able to mark Facebook Events as online only and, in the coming weeks, integrate Facebook Live so you can broadcast to your guests. To support creators and small businesses, we plan to add the ability for Pages to charge for access to events with Live videos on Facebook – anything from online performances to classes to professional conferences.

To help you raise money for causes, you can now add the donate button to live videos wherever nonprofit fundraisers are available.

We’re making it easier to access live video so you can watch or listen anywhere. If you have limited data or a spotty connection, you now have the option to listen to the audio only. If you don’t have a Facebook account, most public live videos are now available on the web and some Pages can share a toll-free number that lets you listen to the audio through any telephone.

You can livestream games from your phone to Facebook using the new Facebook Gaming app available on Google Play. The app also lets you play games instantly, watch your favorite streamers and discover new gaming groups. Tournaments are another new feature for game streaming that lets you create, play and watch the competition in one spot. Tournaments are available on Facebook today, and coming to the Facebook Gaming app soon.

To help you support some of your favorite creators, we’re expanding Stars to more Pages and more countries. Once you buy Stars you can send them to creators while they’re streaming, and they’ll earn 1 cent for every Star.

On Instagram…

You can now watch and comment on live videos from your desktop. Follow along with that yoga class on a bigger screen or listen to a live performance as you work.

After you go live, you’ll soon be able to save your videos to IGTV so they stick around longer than the 24-hour limit in Stories and are easier for others to find.

On Portal…

You’ll soon be able to go live from Portal to Facebook Pages and Groups. The Facebook Live app on Portal already lets you broadcast to your profile, but later this month you’ll be able to share with your communities, too. Whether you’re sharing a make-up or baking tutorial or hosting a more intimate conversation, Portal’s AI-powered Smart Camera can be your personal cinematographer, keeping you perfectly framed, so you can stay present in the moment.

Messenger Kids Global Expansion and New Features

Messenger Kids can help kids stay in touch with friends and family in a fun, parentally-supervised environment. We started expanding the free video calling and messaging app to more than 70 countries and adding new options to help parents connect kids with their friends.

Set Up a Virtual Date in Facebook Dating

To help people find meaningful relationships even when they can’t meet in person, we’re adding an option in Facebook Dating to invite people to a virtual date. When they accept, you’ll start a video chat in Messenger to get to know each other. This will roll out in the coming months.

Click to expand...

Source: https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/in...ssenger-rooms/

See also: https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/pr...ssenger-rooms/

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) View on Twitter
Click to expand...

Brink · Aug 26, 2020

Facebook Adds New Feature to Messenger for Valentine's Day

Messenger is a special place to connect and share with the people most important to you – whether making date night plans with your partner, arranging a girls night out with your closest friends, or jumping on a group video chat to catch up with your family.

In light of this, today we announced a fun and delightful feature just in time for Valentine’s Day. Starting tomorrow, if you newly indicate you’re in a romantic relationship on Facebook (aka make it “FB official”), you’ll get a Messenger notification that will open to your conversation with your loved one. From there…

It’s raining hearts! A heart shower will fall across your screen.

Spread the love: Your custom emoji (in the lower right hand corner) will be

, so expressing your love will be fast and easy

Get personal: You’ll be prompted to personalize your chat and set your own custom text color, emoji, and nickname in case you want to switch things up even more.

Chatting with bae: Your loved one will be the first person to appear on the Active tab, so you can easily see when they’re available to chat.

We can’t wait to hear what you think of this new feature. Valentine’s Day may be a perfect time to finally make it “FB official”!
Click to expand...

In the spirit of feeling all the feelings, we thought it would be timely to share how people in the Messenger community express their love and adoration.
We found that emojis are the new love language: people share over 2 billion emojis every day on Messenger, with

ranking in the top five most popular emojis.
Men and women actually express their love (via emojis) pretty similarly! For example,

is the second most popular emoji for both men and women.
For those who like to personalize their chats, red is the most popular chat color and

is the most popular custom emoji.

And to no surprise, Messenger continues to be the place where people come to connect and share when they’re feeling the love. Valentine’s Day was one of the most popular and active days on Messenger last year – we’re excited to see if that holds true for this year!

If you’re planning to send someone a love note tomorrow, make it special this year with a variety of fun filters and effects in the Messenger Camera. Try out the heart eyes filter (open your mouth and you’ll see a fun animation), add some festive flair with a falling candy heart effect, or channel your inner royalty with the Queen of Hearts filter. The Messenger Camera is one tap or swipe away whether you’re already in a conversation or you’ve just opened the app.

All of these festive filters and effects are also available in Messenger video chat! You can call a loved one by starting or opening a one-on-one or group chat and tap the video icon in the top right corner. Then tap the star icon to access all of the fun filters and effects.

Source: Feeling the Love with Messenger | Facebook Newsroom