Facebook launches chat room app

Facebook has launched a new ‘messageboard’ app allowing people to set up online chat rooms.

Called Rooms, it is designed to reignite the online messageboard chat of the early internet.

Unlike Facebook, it does not require people to use their real name.

One of the magical things about the early days of the web was connecting to people who you would never encounter otherwise in your daily life,’ Facebook’s Josh Miller, who created the app, said.

‘Forums, message boards and chatrooms were meeting places for people who didn’t necessarily share geographies or social connections, but had something in common.’

Created by Facebook Creative Labs, a room is a feed of photos, videos, and text with a topic determined by whoever created the room.

Early users have already created rooms for everything from beat boxing videos to parkour to photos of home- cooked meals.

There’s even a room called ‘Kicks From Above’ that showcases photographs of cool shoes in cool places.

Miller said the app also addressed complaints that Facebook forces people to use their real name in discussions.

‘One of the things our team loves most about the internet is its potential to let us be whoever we want to be,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter where you live, what you look like or how old you are – all of us are the same size and shape online.

‘This can be liberating, but only if we have places that let us break away from the constraints of our everyday selves.

‘That’s why in Rooms you can be ‘Wonder Woman’ – or whatever name makes you feel most comfortable and proud.

Last month, the company suggested that performers such as drag queens have other ways of maintaining their stage identities on the site, such as creating pages that are meant for businesses and public figures.

But a fan page is not the same as a regular Facebook account and users were not happy with the suggestion.

A group of transvestites in San Francisco claimed it was their human right to identify as their alter-egos.

Now, the company says the spirit of its policy doesn’t mean a person’s legal name but ‘the authentic name they use in real life.’