{"id":75838,"date":"2014-10-31T16:00:16","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T14:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/?p=75838"},"modified":"2025-07-02T00:23:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T07:23:15","slug":"why-rooms-is-not-the-future-of-anonymous-chat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/why-rooms-is-not-the-future-of-anonymous-chat\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Rooms is not the future of anonymous chat"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not a fan of Rooms<\/a>. The new app from Facebook is bringing back late 90s chat rooms<\/strong> in a 2010 way, adding image and video streams to the mix and letting people comment in private rooms that are only accessible through QR code invites<\/strong>. Reaction so far has been fairly positive, but I\u2019m less than impressed with this largely touted \u2018anonymous chat\u2019 app from Facebook.<\/p>\n

Back to the early days of the web<\/h3>\n

In an interview with TechCrunch<\/em><\/a>, Creator Josh Miller claims that the app isn\u2019t as much about anonymity as it is about identity,<\/strong> citing its ability to let you \u201cmake the social network that\u2019s perfect for you\u201d. Rooms lets users create their own platform,<\/strong> like in the early days of the web. Users can have dialogue around basically anything they want, without having to associate their real identities to the discussion. Rooms achieves this anonymous identity without the need for registering (although you can associate your ID with an email if you want), along with the ability to pick a different nickname for each room you want to contribute to. According to Miller, the hope is to build active communities<\/strong> that people will keep coming back to.<\/p>\n

\"Rooms1\"<\/a>Once you scan a QR code, the room will be added to your list<\/em><\/p>\n

My problem with Rooms isn’t necessarily it’s concept, but its delivery and subsequently cited use case. For starters, the idea of creating a conversation, basically a forum, doesn\u2019t seem conducive to the way the app\u2019s designed. The focus of Rooms is around image streams, similar to Instagram, and from what I\u2019ve seen so far, commentary and discussion around those images is limited. This makes me dubious about the \u2018chat\u2019 references being thrown around about the app, as well as the potential for a real forum for discussion.<\/p>\n

As an example, Miller cited two rooms<\/strong> which he was particularly proud of: one for backpackers<\/strong> or travelers looking for hidden travel gems off the beaten path, and another for individuals in the transgender community <\/strong>looking for an anonymous forum for discussion.<\/p>\n

For me, one seems much more logical than the other. It makes sense to want to discuss sensitive or serious topics\u2013 like those in the transgender community\u2013 anonymously, but things like travel advice seem much less useful, especially when you consider the design of the app. If you\u2019re looking for real travel advice, you\u2019re not going to scroll through a stream of images in the hopes that you\u2019ll come across a locale in your vicinity that you\u2019d like to go to. With no hashtags or search function<\/strong>, finding any useful travel information seems unlikely, and even if you\u2019re not looking for actual tips but purely out of interest, it\u2019d be just as easy to look for hashtags or geo-located tags in Instagram.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Rooms\"Instagram’s geo-tags seems a lot more useful than Rooms’ descriptions, and with no comments, the community doesn’t seem active.<\/em><\/p>\n

Back to building a community<\/h3>\n

In terms of practicality, Rooms is based on hunting for rooms or creating them based on specific topics. But because it\u2019s not based on trends or popularity, and because there\u2019s no search within the app, relevant rooms<\/strong> can actually be tough to find, especially if you don\u2019t know where to look. Even if you want to find a room about a certain topic, you\u2019ll have to look to see if there\u2019s a QR code (another outdated tool) available for it on another social network. It\u2019s kind of like a crap shoot; ask around or scour the web to see if there\u2019s a room for what you\u2019re looking for. So far, Instagram and Twitter <\/strong>seem to be the only places to find QR codes in bulk. In terms of being practical\u2026 it\u2019s just not.<\/p>\n

\"RoomsYou can find QR codes by searching #Rooms, but even then it’s hit and miss.<\/em><\/p>\n

On top of that, like with any new social network, building a community from scratch, especially a robust one with a multitude of active rooms, is no easy task<\/strong>. There are already plenty of well-established forums out there, accessible and manageable through apps like Tapatalk<\/a> or Reddit\u2019s Alien Blue<\/a>, which actually have the potential for more robust discussions.<\/p>\n

To me, it seems as if Facebook is once again trying to attach its name to a trend that\u2019s already saturated the market (see Slingshot<\/a> and Paper<\/a>). There\u2019s certainly a desire for the ability to anonymously express<\/strong> one\u2019s self online, but as far as apps go, Whisper<\/a> and Secret<\/a> already contribute to the ability to \u201canonymously<\/a>\u201d post things. A service like Reddit takes care of trending conversation threads with semi-anonymous identities.<\/p>\n

Back to the drawing board<\/h3>\n

Miller claims that he\u2019s bringing back the excitement of the early web and the ability to freely move<\/strong> around online with an identity that doesn’t reveal definitively who you are. The question is whether or not people want to go back<\/strong> to that pseudo-identity of online days past. I for one, don\u2019t see the value.<\/p>\n

Having said that, if there is a big market out there for this kind of identity-free forum hub, the app could be useful. Unfortunately, I don\u2019t think that the way Rooms is designed is conducive to achieving the type of open discussion it\u2019s hoping to.<\/p>\n

If Rooms really wants to create something useful, Miller and Co. will have to look beyond QR code<\/strong> gimmicks and closed, invite-only networks to create a space that\u2019s open and invites useful discussion, not simply based on liking or commenting on images in Instagram-like feeds.<\/p>\n

If you wanna check it out for yourself, download Rooms for iOS.<\/a><\/p>\n

Related articles:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anonymous social networks and chat apps: why are they suddenly so cool?<\/a><\/p>\n

Secret and Whisper know your location, even if your friends don’t<\/a><\/p>\n

‘Anonymous’ social networks like Secret fail to provide anonymity<\/a><\/p>\n

Follow me on Twitter: @suzieblaszQwicz<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not a fan of Rooms. The new app from Facebook is bringing back late 90s chat rooms in a 2010 way, adding image and video streams to the mix and letting people comment in private rooms that are only accessible through QR code invites. Reaction so far has been fairly positive, but I\u2019m less … Continue reading “Why Rooms is not the future of anonymous chat”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2039,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-75838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2039"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329902,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75838\/revisions\/329902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75838"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=75838"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=75838"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=75838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}