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Meta will begin testing the ability for people on Messenger to start Community Chats, with more Facebook groups to be added to the mix in the coming weeks.
Community Chats are aimed at enabling people to connect with family and friends, as well as their communities, and organize those chats into categories to members of a group can easily locate topics of interest to them.
Administrators will be able to start a conversation about a topic and receive in-the-moment responses, rather than waiting for people to see posts and comment on them.
Options being tested include event chats for planning an outing or meetup, view-only broadcast chats that let admins detail updates affecting the entire group and admin-only chats for admins and moderators.
Audio channels are also being tested as a way to let 30 group members share live commentary or receive real-time support, with Meta offering as an example the admin of a Facebook group for chemistry students creating audio channels for study groups, allowing participants to turn on a video for live tutoring.
Admins will also have access to more robust tools to manage the chat and audio experiences, with moderation capabilities including blocking, muting or suspending group members, as well as removing members or messages.
An Admin Assist tool will let admins set custom criteria for automatically removing reported messages, stopping messages from ineligible authors or containing violating content from being sent and suspending users, and chat members can report messages to group admins or Meta itself, block users or leave a chat at any time.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post Tuesday, “Most people use feeds to discover content and use messaging for deeper connections. We’re building Community Chats as a new way to connect with people who share your interests. More than 1 billion people use Messenger to communicate with friends, and soon, you’ll be able to start Community Chats from Messenger, as well as Facebook groups.”
