Facebook Rooms joins the anonymous-chat wave
Facebook has jumped in on the trend of anonymous chat apps.
I am Bridget Carey and this is your cnet Update.
[MUSIC]
Right now in social media, it's a bit of a trend to be anonymous.
Apps that mask your identity like Whisper, Yik Yak and Secret are growing in popularity.
You could see this as a rebellion against Facebook, where people don't want to use their real names.
But Facebook itself has now joined in on the trend and created a separate app to let you chat anonymously.
It's called Rooms.
You create discussion boards on any topic you can dream up.
Then you invite others to join, and this invite part is key to what makes rooms different from other apps.
You can't join a room unless you know the invite code.
There is no search tool for finding rooms.
You can keep it private and only invite select people by sending a text message.
Or if you did want to open it up to more random people you could spread the link around online or print it out and post the code in a public place.
This invite code system could be a solution to the problems faced by other anonymous apps like YikYak which are being used for bullying students or sending bomb threats.
But the extra step of the invites could also turn people away as a hassle.
The Rooms creator has the option to approve every post or it can be a free-for-all.
And for now Rooms is only on the iPhone.
And speaking of this anti-Facebook movement, you remember Ello?
It was the new social network that lots of buzz for not having advertisements.
Well, Ello is off to a good start.
It raised $5.5 million in funding and the sites founders say it has more than one million users.
With three million or more on the waiting list to join.
In other news, Apple's newest iPads have arrived in the stores.
But if you walk by an Apple store and see a line outside chances are those people aren't lining up for the iPad.
In New York City, people are still lining outside Apple stores, for the new iPhones.
Seriously, it has been a month since the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus hit stores.
And Apple still dealing with huge demand.
Anyone who wanted a new iPad, could just walk in the store.
There was no wait.
There's just not much demand for tablets these days.
But that means companies are getting creative with tablet promotions.
AT&T is selling Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX.
It's a 7 inch screen tablet that came out last year and it costs 180 dollars.
But if you get it at AT&T with a data plan the price drops to 100 dollars.
You're also going to see online shopping deals get better as retailers battle Amazon this holiday season.
For the first time, Target is offering free shipping for online orders now until December 20th.
It doesn't matter how much you spend.
That's your tech news update and there's always more at cnet.com.
From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey.
[MUSIC]
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