Facebook Messenger Rooms can bring together 50 people in single call

Messenger Rooms is now available. Image: Courtesy of Facebook

Facebook has announced that the Messenger Rooms tool announced in April — which lets users invite up to 50 people to participate simultaneously in a single video — is now live.

Just a few weeks ago, Facebook introduced its Zoom competitor Messenger Rooms which launched Thursday and, just as promised, the maximum room size is 50 people.

While the host needs a Facebook or Messenger account in order to launch a call on their News Feed, in Groups, on Events pages, or privately, the participants don’t need either to join in. The host can “choose who can see and join your room or remove people from your room and lock the room if you don’t want anyone else to join.”

#MessengerRooms is here and starting to roll out globally. Create or join a room with up to 50 people, with no time limit. #SeeYouHere” https://t.co/VF7iMpQ31K

— Messenger (@messenger) May 14, 2020

When a room is made, the host can choose who to invite from their Facebook friends list or can share an automatically created link with those not on the platform.

Though at first glance, a room size of 50 seems impressive, Zoom can host up to 100 people at once; however, these large Zoom calls can only last a maximum of 40 minutes. Those who purchase a Large Meeting plan can have up to 500 people with two-way video and audio in a single room.

Facebook promises that the company will roll out more features to the tool over upcoming months. What exactly those updates will consist of has yet to be announced. NVG

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