Facebook reportedly testing user-hosted chat rooms

Facebook is said to be testing a new feature that will allow users to set up chat rooms that their friends can join without the need of an invitation.

According to a new report by TechCrunch, the feature has been codenamed ‘Host Chat’ and is being tested internally. Facebook has also acknowledged the existence of the service with the usual boilerplate statement that the company tests features time to time with a small group of users, but that doesn’t imply that the feature would necessarily be rolled out widely.

The ‘Host Chat’ feature appears to be similar to the chat feature that exists in Facebook Groups, through which group members can chat with each other. However, it appears to be more viral as an update about a user creating a chat room appears in the News Feed, by default, and any of the user’s friends can join in. However, users who create the room can set privacy limits to allow selected users to join the group and even expel other users out of the room. It’s not confirmed yet, but the feature may allow users to keep the chat room open to friends of friends, as per the report.

The feature in its current avatar is limited to the Web version of Facebook and allows only text chat, with support for emoji likely to be added later.

‘Host Chat’ would allow Facebook to get its users spend more time on the service as it struggles to offer novelty in a world where communication is increasingly moving to mobile. The feature will compete with online services like Google Hangouts that lets users host video chat rooms.

Facebook already offers a Messenger app on mobile which competes with other mobile messaging apps such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber and Line.