Facebook's Creative Labs have come up with an app that's very un-Facebook: anonymous (technically, pseudonymous) chat, in Rooms. For iOS only at the moment, Rooms seeks to rekindle the early Internet phenomenon of strangers on forums, chat rooms, and message boards connecting with each other over common interests.


The actual features of Rooms are pretty limited. This is in line with Facebook's multi-app strategy -- launched in recent years with the goal of unpacking Facebook's many features into several simpler apps -- after realizing how off-putting incredibly complex apps, such as its flagship, could be. Especially for all-important new users.

The Rooms app's simplicity also jives with the early web of the 1990s, the pseudonymous social aspects of which Rooms is explicitly trying to revive. The irony of a Facebook property built specifically for this purpose is hard to ignore.

Signing up for and using this Facebook app, on the other hand, is easy. On first launch, you'll be tempted to try to log in with your Facebook name, but it won't work. You just create a new account (pretty sure you have to be logged into Facebook on your i-device in general, though), get a new "invite," for one of Facebook's pre-set Rooms, and take a screenshot of it.

(Photo : iTunes Store: Facebook Rooms)

The invite system is one non-throwback aspect of Rooms. You enter new rooms though invites only, and those invites can appear on your phone through social media, email, websites, or, through an actual printed-out QR Rooms invite posted on a real-life bulletin board, flyer, bathroom stall wall -- what have you.

The idea of Rooms invites invading the real world is about as appealing to a tech writer as any use of QR codes ever has been, and taking screenshots of the digital images for later use seems inane to a non-habitual iPhone user. However, my wife is always taking screenshots on her phone, so for regular iPhone users at least, the app's invite system probably makes sense.

Once you're in a "room," any new-tech weirdness dissolves into a simple set of options. You can choose a nickname, meaning you can choose your level of apparent anonymity, for each room. You can post pictures, video, and text. And you can "like" and comment on posts. That's it for the invitee side of Rooms.

If you create a room, you have a few more options, including setting posting and invite permissions, 18+ age limits (remember, Facebook still knows who's behind the nicknames in each room), and customize the room's look, including custom "Like" icons and text.

(Photo : iTunes Store: Facebook Rooms)

The only thing I would add to Rooms would be the ability for anyone to pick an avatar picture along with their nickname, like a real message board. (Though that might have made the design of Rooms too actionable, apparently.)

I would add nothing else though, because if Rooms is truly about rekindling social aspects of the web 1.0, the true feature of each room will be the people you meet in it, the discussions going on, and the subject everyone's all gathering around.

Whether Facebook is truly successful, or Rooms remains a curious underused facsimile of the "real" Internet forums it's embracing, remains to be seen.

It's at least nice to know that Zuckerberg sees something about the old anonymous web that's worth preserving, though.

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