- The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, announced this morning that “Community Chats” will soon be available in Facebook Groups and Messenger.
- To organize conversations into groups, large Messenger groups can employ features like admin-only chats for announcements, audio and video channels for in-context discussion, and event chats.
- Discord and other community chats are designed to make it easier to follow extended conversations involving many people.
- Community Chats can be started through Messenger and Facebook Groups.
- Testing of the functionality will start right away, and over the next few weeks, it will be made available to groups.
This morning, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, revealed that “Community Chats” are coming to Facebook Groups and Messenger. Large Messenger groups can use the capability to categorize discussions into groups, including admin-only chats for announcements, audio and video channels for in-context discussion, and event chats. Community Chats, like Discord, are made to make it simpler to follow lengthy conversations with lots of participants.
“Most people use feeds to discover content and use messaging for deeper connections. We’re building Community Chats as a new way to connect with people who share your interests. More than 1 billion people use Messenger to communicate with friends, and soon you’ll be able to start Community Chats from Messenger as well as Facebook Groups,” Zuckerberg told.
Meta Community Chats: A Discord-like feature
Similar to a Facebook group, these conversations are meant to include people outside of your immediate circle of friends. For example, if you’re a woman who enjoys surfing, you might join “Women Who Surf,” as depicted in the mock-up image. The software will launch with moderation capabilities that let administrators delete messages and block, mute, or suspend group members because you’ll probably engage with strangers. Administrators will be able to establish unique criteria for automated moderation through a “admin help” function. You can instantly prohibit users who send messages containing the f-bomb, for instance, if you run a G-rated chat and don’t want people to use it.
Through community chats, users can interact more meaningfully with communities about the issues that are important to them in text, voice, and video formats. To enable connections whenever, whenever, and however desired, the experience seamlessly combines Messenger and Facebook Groups.
Instead of waiting for people to leave comments on a post, administrators can now start a discussion about a subject and receive immediate responses. Additionally, the person who develops the Community Chat can categorize chats so that group members can quickly find what interests them, rather than having to navigate through a variety of topics in a single Messenger group chat. A band’s fan group, for instance, might feature a “Breaking News” category with discussions devoted to the release of new albums, tour dates, and group activities.
Both Facebook Groups and Messenger can launch Community Chats. The feature will begin testing immediately and roll out to groups over the next few weeks.
Meta has already begun integrating Slack- and Discord-like functionality into Messenger. The “@everyone” function, which notifies all chat participants, was added to Messenger in March. The /silent command, on the other hand, transmits a message without informing the receiver at all.
Community Chats are solely accessible to group members, as has always been strongly suggested. Facebook offers a number of moderation options to make sure the experience isn’t unpleasant. Real-time interaction is certainly intended to entice users to engage with Community Chats, and if Discord’s success is any indication, it just might succeed.
