If you find yourself tired of using Zoom to catch up with the friends you’ve been distancing from (personally, I think it’s been fine, but I know so many people who dislike it—why?) then a new feature on Instagram might offer a better, definitely more convenient, option.

Messenger Rooms is a Facebook-originated concept, which made its debut last month and is now adoptable through Instagram’s direct-messaging inbox. So there’s the catch—in order to use this feature, you must have your Instagram account connected to Facebook.

But as long as you’ve got that, you can play around with this video chat option that can connect as many as up to 50 people. That’s pretty big!

Compared to Zoom, which requires a conference number and password to access, Messenger Rooms are accessible by a simple link—definitely more casual, probably a bit less secure, but if you’re just looking for a fun hang or catchup, with no secret business information being shared, then you’re probably good to go. Designed to mimic the real-life spontaneity of in-person get-togethers, users can pop in and out as they please, with new ones coming and going on a single session all the time. Just 50 users can be on at one time, which allows the potential for an even higher number of users taking part in one session.

There’s a lot to work with here for the jewelry industry. While Instagram’s more lax option won’t suffice for a more formal webinar, imagine sending out invites to your industry friends and colleagues for a post-discussion on the presentation. Invite your customers for a happy hour toast or just catch up with your family once in a while.

One must note that it is necessary to have Facebook Messenger installed on your smart device in order to take part—which is pretty annoying, actually. We’ll have to look for updates to see if Instagram alone will be able to handle this through its app, but for now, I think this is Facebook’s way of getting people to use all of its products. Still, it’s a worthwhile effort that caters to our current need for remote-access socialization, so it should be interesting to see how users adopt it—if they do.

It’s incredibly user-friendly (so long as all of the aforementioned requirements are met), so if you’re comfortable, I’d highly recommend giving it a try with your industry friends and customers.

(Top image via Facebook)

Brittany Siminitz

JCK Contributing Editor