Gadgetory

Facebook has jumped in on the trend of anonymous chat apps I'm Bridget Carey and this is your cnet update 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 they 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 it 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 Yik yak 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 had lots of buzz for not having advertisements well ello is off to a good start it raised 5.5 million dollars in funding and the sites founders say it has more than 1 million users with 3 million more on the waiting list to join in other news Apple's newest iPads have arrived in stores but if you want buy an Apple store and see a line outside chances are those people are not lining up for the iPad in New York City people are still lining up outside Apple stores for the new iPhones seriously and has been a month since the iphone 6 and 6 plus hit stores and apples still dealing with huge demand anyone who wanted a new iPad could just walk in the store was no wait there's just not much demand for tablets these days but that means companies are getting creative with tablet promotions ATT is selling Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX is a 7-inch screen tablet that came out last year and it costs one hundred and eighty dollars but if you get it at 18 tea with a data plan the price drops to one hundred 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 twentieth it doesn't matter how much you spend that your tech news update and there's always more at cnet com from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey