Facebook Rooms, the social networking giant’s latest attempt at Reddit-like anonymous posting app, received new capabilities Tuesday morning in the first feature focused update following its App Store debut a month ago.
In addition to performance improvements, Rooms 1.1 now has an Activity dashboard, will send you push notifications when somebody posts to a room you’re in and lets you choose among 50+ new custom sounds for the Like button.
My initial gripe wit the app had to do with the lack of a feed with important activity. The new Activity dashboard sees to that: not only will it tell you how much time people spend in the room, you also get to see how many posts, comments and likes your room has collected compared to the previous week.
In the name of Reddit-like anonymous posting, Rooms doesn’t require a Facebook account, not even your email, and you’re not required to import your friend lists from Facebook or any other service.
Facebook Rooms 1.1 changelog:
- Sounds: Pick a custom sound for members to hear when they tap the like button—more than 50 options!
- Activity dashboard: Track activity in your room, including total time spent in the room and posts, comments, and likes over the last week.
- Push notifications: Get messages on your phone when somebody posts to a room you’re in. Turn them on or off in Settings.
- Bug fixes: We fixed a bunch of things to make Rooms work better and faster.
With Rooms, you can pick your favorite topic, customize the look and feel of your room and its Like button, share it with others and more. Others can join your rooms either through private invitations or a public link.
“A room is a feed of photos, videos, and text – not too different from the one you have on Instagram or Facebook – with a topic determined by whoever created the room,” Facebook said.
The 22-megabyte app supports natively the iPhone and iPod touch devices with iOS 7.0 or later. Facebook Rooms is currently available on iOS in the United States, United Kingdom and a few other English speaking countries.
Download Facebook Rooms free in the App Store.