Facebook confirmed that they were already testing a new feature that will allow users to create chat rooms where anyone can participate even without an invitation. This will be called ‘Host Chat’.
TechCrunch reached out to Facebook and was able to confirm this chat room rumor. There are indications that the Host Chat will be similar to the old AOL chat rooms. The social networking giant has been doing test with small percentage of users before they decide that it is ready to go live for all millions of users. They didn’t confirm though if the chat room feature will be available to all countries.
The Host Chat will be competing with existing chat services of other developers such as Apple’s iMessage and Google’s Hangouts. This is a very important move for Facebook as this new feature will surely generate more users to the site, direct monetization opportunities, and more ads.
How does it work?
These details may be changed if ever it is fully launched since it is still in the testing phase. Once the chat room feature goes live, there will be a ‘Host Chat’ option right under your Update Status option in the homepage. Clicking the option will open a chat room which the host can name to say the purpose of the chat. He can then invite friends to join the chat and those who were not invited may also join too if it is an open chat room. Yes, the host can still set it to be private, open, or restrict it from some people. He can also kick out some chat room participants if he wanted too.
Here, the host acts like an admin of the chat room he created.
Host Chat is conceptually better than Google Hangout since the latter has a limit of 10 people in the chat room while Facebook can accommodate even the friends of friends.
What’s exciting about this feature is that you are now meeting total strangers but friends of friends making it a more reliable social interaction. Facebook has not confirmed yet the target launch date of the feature.
