Facebook Messenger Gets Community Chats For Facebook Groups

Mark Zuckerberg had recently announced the launch of Community Chats for Facebook Groups inside Messenger. During the beta testing period, Meta will let users create Facebook Groups, chats, and audio channels, as well as send out invitations to other users to join their new group, all from within the app.

What Are Community Chats?

Discord and Community Chats appear to work pretty similarly. Community Chats are described by Meta as a platform that enables users to communicate with their communities on Facebook and Messenger in real time about the topics that are important to them using text, voice, and video. Admins can now start a conversation about a topic and receive quick answers, rather than waiting for people to leave comments on a post, thanks to the seamless integration of Messenger and Facebook Groups.

How Does It Work?

The Community Chat administrator can categorize the content so that group members can quickly identify the topics that interest them. As an admin, you can launch a chat for group members to discuss a particular subject, an event chat for an excursion or meetup, a view-only broadcast chat to share updates with the whole group, and an admin-only chat where you can work with other admins and moderators. You can also create audio channels, and once users are within an audio channel, they can choose to turn on video.

Members of a group are the only people who can access Community Chats. To guarantee that the experience isn’t unpleasant, Facebook offers a range of moderation options. The company is evidently hoping that the real-time interaction will compel users to engage in Community Chats, and if Discord’s success is any indication, this just could succeed as well.