Facebook Lets You Create Forums On Your Phone With ‘Rooms’

Facebook Creative Labs announced the launch of a new application today, called Rooms, which simply brings the ability to create and contribute to forums through a mobile device. It is quite different from other Facebook applications because while the rest rely upon your real identity, Rooms allows you to remain anonymous by using different names for different forums, or “Rooms” as they’re called in the app. The app is separate from Facebook so it is not linked to your profile on the social network.

A room can include feeds of text, photos and videos that one can easily create on the likes of Facebook itself and even Instagram. Topic of the room is determined by the one who creates it. Described as a “flexible, creative tool,” rooms can have customized member permissions, custom pinned messages, dominant colors, cover photos and a lot more, so users can streamline the appearance based on the topic on which the room has been created for and the content that’s allowed.

It is possible to create different identities for different contexts. So you can be “ir0nm@nrulez” in a room dedicated to Tony Star quotes and just use your real first name in a room that’s populated by your friends, family and relatives.

There are no powerful discovery features in the app so really the only way to join a room is when you have been invited to one. The invites procedue is based on QR codes and one simply has to either scan one or have one of a room in their camera roll to join the fray

The Rooms app is available for free right now, only for the iPhone, through the App Store. At no stage does the app require you to connect a Facebook account, enter your real identity and provide access to address book on your iPhone, which makes it seem like Facebook isn’t behind this application.