Facebook Rooms | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Rooms

rooms.me

164 pointsjamesjyu112 comments

Facebook's strategy to create separate apps is a good one, but Rooms seem rather niche. Facebook groups are better for many purposes since they have access to notifications and the newsfeed. Reddit probably works better for large groups and allows anonymity too (though not on a per Reddit basis). So Rooms work for groups where anonymity is valuable (ie. sharing secrets, controversial opinions, ect) and where the groups aren't too large. Here, the discovery mechanism being overly complex actually does provide an advantage. It makes it more likely to be "underground" and hence cool.

I disagree - Rooms seems like it is trying to do too many things at once.

The discovery mechanism is QR codes, which wasn't "underground" enough to boost any marketing or advertising activities that were based on them. In fact, because each room's value relies on user-generated content, I have a feeling that this will be short lived, if only because it is so difficult to get more users into a room to generate content.

One of the reasons subreddits achieved such popularity was because of the extreme ease by which users can find, join, and start submitting.

Without clear connections between rooms, all it's going to take is joining a few empty rooms before users become disengaged and start ignoring invites like they do most other QR codes.

> One of the reasons subreddits achieved such popularity was because of the extreme ease by which users can find, join, and start submitting.

This is exactly why Facebook Groups are taking off right now.

QR codes? They must be wanting more mobile engagement.

The UX is so silly. Give me a list of damn rooms I can join, or a search feature. I'm all for the screenshot invite method as an additional feature, but it's a terrible onboarding process and I think will make many people not bother.

This would be amazing if there were indexed public rooms, or even rooms tied to geo-locations that you could join because they were based solely in your area. The coded invite-only kills it.

Quite unexpected on the part of Facebook, and looks like an interesting project.

A couple of points on their Privacy page bothers me, though:

> Once you confirm your account, you may delete content you have posted at any time. <…>

> To sign up for Rooms, you may provide us with information such as an email address and usernames. <…>

> We may share information about you within the companies and services operated by Facebook to understand and improve our services [but the information from Rooms won't be posted to Facebook and vice-versa].

It'd be more fun if you couldn't delete your content (so that messages posted a while ago don't lose their context), but instead you could be absolutely anonymous (not even having to provide valid email address, which per above will quite likely be matched with your Facebook account at some point).

>> "It'd be more fun if you couldn't delete your content (so that messages posted a while ago don't lose their context), but instead you could be absolutely anonymous (not even having to provide valid email address, which per above will quite likely be matched with your Facebook account at some point)."

If they did that people would be complaining that Facebook won't let them delete their data.

People most certainly would complain in either case, no arguing here.

You can be totally anonymous - don't need to provide email to use the app

You'd have to work a lot harder than that. Facebook knows a LOT about you.

The deleted content could be replaced by "[deleted]", like on imgur/reddit.

Holy shit! It's IRC.

Facebook is the quintessential AOL 2.0.

More likely a XMPP MUC [0], given that part of Facebook's architecture involves XMPP (as far as I remember you can login on your XMPP client with your Facebook credentials and discuss with your Facebook contacts but not with other contacts)

If this is true and they later open up federation, it will be awesome.

[0] http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0045.html

EDIT: it appears you can't connect with your Facebook credentials (link is blocked here, had to read it somewhere else)

It seems more like old Facebook Pages. Join "Guinea Pigs Are The Best, RITE?!?" and talk to other like minded individuals today!

It would have been better if they threw up an IRC server and built an app around that.

Without usernames like 19834839392...

You're thinking ICQ.

Oops. Saw the wrong letters. :-)

Not that far off anyway, AOL did own ICQ for a number of years, sold it 2010 if my memory serves me right.

How can anyone justify building an iOS-only app when it's only 11% of the market, while Android is 84%?

Because it's the 11% that matters. I mean this honestly, I'm not being dismissive. I could point you at plenty of data to back this up, but the simple fact that almost everyone's app goes iOS first should be sufficient to indicate that it's the platform that matters most.

Side note: I've got both iOS and Android devices, and nearly every app on Android feels like a cheap knockoff of the iOS equivalent. I can't think of a single situation where I prefer the Android app over the iOS app.

The relevant data you're probably thinking about is average monthly spend, and popularity in the USA.

For a free app with an international audience like Facebook, this seems like the wrong strategy

Ultimately, because it's easier.

I was speaking to a friend recently about writing iOS & Android apps and their Android apps literally take 4x longer than their iOS apps to build because of hardware fragmentation. As in, bugs in the hardware of phones like the SGS3 (still a very large portion of the market) causing them to have to implement massive workarounds and complete full testing on actual hardware devices.

Because those numbers grossly misrepresent reality. In north american usage stats its often more like 80-20 iOS. Android devices are out there, but they're largely still just being used as phones. iOS users are much more likely to actually use their phones for things like hanging out on random facebook social experiments.

I love how this comment appears every time there's an app announcement here. Face it, if you want the earliest access to new mobile apps, Android is the wrong platform.

"face it" as if my comment implied that Android users are entitled to it? That's just the attitude I would expect from an Apple fanboy.

11% of the global market. Remember that.

It is around 40%-50% of the developed world. Japan is the #1 iPhone nation at around 55% share, the US alone I remember reading its around 52% of smartphones are iPhones. Also 50% of iPhones out there use the latest OS (a month from release) and that will only accelerate while only 25% of Androids use the latest OS.

Edit: Also Apple is betting on turning China into an iPhone nation. There were around 20 million pre-orders for the iPhone 6 in China. The iPhone marketshare might shrink as more people get smartphones, but the iPhone isn't going anywhere soon, it seems its going to be the phone of the middle class around the world.

iOS users have more income and time to waste probably.

You can't run a decent app on half of those $100 Android 'smartphones'.

Shame that it's currently ios only. Any chance of a web/android app, or is this purely an experimental product for the time being?

It's from "Facebook Creative Labs" (https://www.facebook.com/labs) so I'm sure this is more experimental at this point.

This. Clicking a download link and being redirected to iTunes won't make my Android devices happy.

Facebook takes on Reddit, et. al.

More like if you invented a sub Reddit/interest clone today, this is what it would be (an app instead of a website).

I visited the website twice and still don't really have an idea what this app does.

Localised Pinterest is my current guess? :\

Facebook’s Rooms App Is a Flashback to Internet Bulletin Boards http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/23/facebooks-rooms-app...

> Facebook’s Rooms App Is a Flashback to Internet Bulletin Boards

A flashback? Wouldn't internet bulletin boards have to have gone away for it to be a flashback to them?

Rooms - participate in an unpaid focus group for your favorite products!

I made a Hacker News room, if nothing else so that people can test an actual room when they see this comment thread.

http://imgur.com/Jl3siZt

"The item you tried to buy is no longer available."

From what I can tell it seems like room names are not unique. I think this is the reason for the "join by screenshot" feature.

Is it only for US? Cause I live in Germany and I can't find it in the Appstore & Facebook Inc's list.

Ugh. I'm in .nl and our app store still doesn't have Facebook Paper, it's been available in the US store for ages now.

I don't think so. I didn't try to download but I can see it on Appstore.

Pretty "funny" but just some weeks ago we did a show HN proof of concept: http://spend-a-day.at/

It's the same but mainly for people who are sitting in front of computer all day long.

Did I understand right rooms.me is mobile only?

Hmm, is there no facebook login option or requirement? Not that it's a bad thing.

well, considering it was written by facebook, i'm guessing there won't be a non-facebook login option.

You don't need a login at all, actually. You can confirm an email if you want, but it's not (currently) required.

What is the room for not buying anything at all? I don't want to share interest in any product.

I would like to see an ancient greek thinker comming to one of theses rooms and wondering what are people talking about here.

Programmers

A room to talk about your recent projects, upcoming hackathons/events, or to simply ask for help!

Let's kick this thing off!

http://i.imgur.com/FIRg6zl.jpg

> "Screenshot & open Rooms app to enter"

This is the worst hyperlink system I have seen, ever.

I both cannot click to get to it, and it is designed to look like a QR code, yet I cannot take a snapshot of my own phone's screen apart from a clunky use of a mirror (which probably doesn't even work).

The fact that there is no Web frontend is obviously an abysmal choice.

Beyond that, the idea behind this app is amazingly great.

If you screenshot the pic or save it to your camera roll, Rooms will automatically add you to the room. It's effectively the same as taking a picture of the QR code.

Except nothing happens when you take the screenshot or save it to your camera roll. It's an awful UX.

I completely agree that the invite process sucks.. theres no discovery/trending feed either - which would be handy for getting exposure for your room!

That's the point at which I deleted the app. Not really interested in it enough to go through such a strange onboarding process.

Here's a version of the invite that can actually be easily scanned:

http://i.imgur.com/pvSeGtY.jpg

Downloaded this app out of curiosity, but deleted it 10 minutes later after failing to find an entrance but stuck at some weird barcode pages...Anyone with me?

Seems quite similar to what I was once working on at Bunch[0].

[0] http://www.joinbunch.com/

thats what I thought of when I saw this.

Cool :) Haven't really run into many on HN familiar with this. We popped up on TC a couple times and managed to get a few thousand users. The cold start problem is tough one to crack though and things ultimately didn't pan out. It's going to be interesting to see how Facebook, Inc. leverages Facebook for Rooms since they have the same problem there.

I also thought of Bunch. We were/are doing something related (but not really) at ReplyAll.me so I had kept track of your company. Were you a dev there?

Yup. I built the first version of the site and the iPhone app some time ago.

Cool, would love to pick your brain sometime.

You can reach me via email if you wish :)

http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k=01v7T3-5hK7BZ7H...

Not sure I understand the need. Aren't there enough places on the Internet where you can connect with people around shared interests?

If you maintain a social graph database with a billion+ nodes, a feature like this will be a great tool for determining the more relevant relationships among users.

I can't find the app on the french AppStore

Interesting to see all these Facebook projects. Looks like this one could be the most promising yet.

Based on what?

Funny guy.

Looking forward for an android port.

So it's kind of like 4Chan?

More like Reddit meets Geocities.

Or a bulletin board, also knonw as BBS. Which is kinda like 4chan. Early forums grew out of the BBS/Usenet experience.

More like an AOL Chat Room? A/S/L?

Works for me! Made a subreddit for sharing invites to rooms: http://reddit.com/r/roominvites

Here's one for San Francisco: http://i.imgur.com/qkks5gt.jpg

The coloration thing is cute, but it really breaks the invite system. I couldn't for the life of me get it to scan the San Francisco invite. Until I popped it open in Acorn and changed the green to black. That worked really well.

San Francisco invite that works: http://i.imgur.com/87rGMHw.jpg

Kind of annoying that it's mobile- and apple-only.

Room for Fantasy Football Sit/Start Advice - http://i.imgur.com/OVOLbjP.png

Designers

A room to talk about design, tools and tricks of the trade, projects, etc.

http://i.imgur.com/c6qURmx.png

Silicon Valley problems: http://i.imgur.com/sxa2F76.jpg

A room for those in London.

Londoners - http://i.imgur.com/zlnB5AR.png

Come and join in :)

Silicon Valley - http://imgur.com/pcfvBXL

what is the difference between this and groups or pages? arrrrrrrrgh

This explains > "Facebook’s Rooms App Is a Flashback to Internet Bulletin Boards" http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/23/facebooks-rooms-app...

whoa, for one, I just understood that it's standalone, no connection to fb. Interesting. And/or external waste of service

why some people like to be anonymous in social networks?

"The item you tried to buy is no longer available."

They pulled it.

Deleted comment

A poor imitation.

This is like GroupMe and YikYak had a child and they decided they needed to add "rooms". I don't see this going anywhere.

Yeah? Not even with Facebook's massive userbase? Features alone never guarantee success. If only .1% of Facebook's users used it, that would be a million users.

By the same token, when something is pushed to all those users and makes relatively little impact, that's a huge opportunity cost for FB. Each time they try something new, it will alienate some users, whether they just visit FB less or stop using altogether or whatever. They would prefer that new products/services make up for that one-time user cost with compensating increased "stickiness" for other users over time, or some similar benefit. They can't annoy their userbase without limit. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part...

The difference between "going somewhere" for a new product and "going somewhere" for a product with an already large userbase is not the same. When you have the numbers Facebook has getting 0.1% of those users is not "going somewhere".

Like the roaring successes of Home, Paper, and whatever that Snapchat clone thing was...?

Rooms is analogus to Slingshot: both apps are cheap clones of popular apps (Whisper/YikYak and Snapchat respectively) with an extra dose of quirky-and-random to appeal to the younger demographic.

I expect Rooms to see the same success as Slingshot. That is, none at all.

This is not a clone of Whisper nor Yik Yak.

Did it get pulled or not propagated correctly ? I get "The item you tried to buy is no longer available." on US Appstore.

Works for me. Searched for Facebook, clicked Related, scrolled to the right to find it, and now it's installing.

I get the same message.

I get this message as well.

Deleted comment

Isn't this Instagram/Vine?

It seems not to be available anymore :(

Same here. Pretty unfortunate launch.

It's possibly only available in the US. It's not available in Canadian App Store :(

What do you mean? The website works for me, and links to the iOS app store.

Attempting to install from the app store pushes an error saying it's no longer available.

It's launched only for US now.

It's launched in the UK as well. I suspect for all those seeing 'unavailable' it's just taking time to propagate through Apple's systems.

I'm in the US and I see this error too

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