April 25th, 2020, 6:28 pm
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With the in-house video conference solution “Messenger Rooms”, Facebook wants to secure a piece of the market that is growing massively in the corona crisis. The mistakes of the main competitor Zoom should be avoided.
Video conferencing provider Zoom had around 10 million users in December 2019. User numbers exploded during the corona crisis. Zoom currently has more than 300 million customers. This growth arouses desires.
Messenger Rooms: 50 participants per video conference
Now Facebook counters with its own offer. This is called “Messenger Rooms” and is intended to enable video conferences with up to 50 participants in the final stage. Around 20 participants will be allowed to start in the next few weeks.
This leaves Rooms behind Zoom, which allows up to 100 participants per video conference and up to 1,000 viewers to watch a video transmission. The duration in the free version of Zoom is limited to 40 minutes, while Facebook’s Messenger Rooms should not be subject to any time limit. That reports The Verge.
This is how the Messenger Rooms will look on the smartphone. (Screenshots: Facebook)
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Messenger rooms are integrated into Facebook products
The “Messenger Rooms” will not be an independent product. Rather, they are initially an extension of the core Facebook service and the messenger app. Later, the rooms are also to be used in Instagram, Whatsapp and Portal.
The use promises to be simple. The host of a room creates a link that is sent to other desired participants. They then click on it and join the conference. The organizer decides whether access should be possible for everyone with knowledge of the link or whether access control should take place.
Access control yes, end-to-end encryption no
Zoom’s lack of access control in particular had given rise to harsh criticism. The relatively weak number sequences with which Zoom built up his conference links were easy to guess. For a while, users made fun of so-called “zoom bombing” by joining randomly selected video conferences. This should not be possible with Rooms. The organizer can remove a participant from the video conference at any time and also prevent the invitation links from being shared, so Facebook.
However, there will be no end-to-end encryption at the start of the solution. This way, Facebook can theoretically access the conferences. The group justifies this with performance requirements at the start. In the course of time, end-to-end encryption, such as has become standard with Whatsapp, will be introduced. For the sake of fairness, it must be mentioned here that Zoom has not yet carried out end-to-end encryption.
Facebook doubles the number of video call participants in Whatsapp
In the meantime, Facebook promises that data from the rooms will not be used for personalized advertising. On the other hand, users should be offered chat rooms for their Facebook friends.
Facebook doubles the number of participants in a video call via Whatsapp. (Screenshot: Facebook)
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Speaking of Whatsapp – here Facebook wants to increase the number of simultaneous participants in a video call from four to eight. The Facebook Dating platform, which has not yet made it to Europe for data protection reasons, is also to be equipped with video conferencing options.
More about video conferencing:
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