If you’re tired of Zoom and its privacy issues, then we have some good news for you. Facebook’s new video chat product Messenger Rooms now provides the same services and that too, on phones and desktops.

The application has more features than its existing Messenger’s video calling function and it allows around 50 people to video call at the same time. The best part is that it has no time limit so you do not have to end the call every 50 minutes.

Source: Facebook

You can use the app even if you do not have a Facebook account. “You can start and share rooms on Facebook through News Feed, Groups, and Events, so it’s easy for you to drop by whenever you want,” writes Stan Chudnovsky, Facebook’s vice president of Messenger, in a blog post published today. “You 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.”

The feature is available for access on Messenger too so if you want to include more people in your call, you just have to press the “People” section. If you make the room public, then it appears at the top of your entire friend list’s Newsfeed so make sure you limit it to a particular group of people.

So far, we know that the quality of sound is amazing and some other features like AR filters and virtual background have been included.

Source: Facebook

Messenger Rooms comes at a good time because the popularity of other video calling apps has been going down recently. Right now, even Facebook does not provide end-to-end encryptions on the video call but the company has assured that it would not listen to the conversations. Given the company’s history, we wouldn’t trust them too much but do give it a try and see if you find it better than Zoom and Skype.