If you miss old school Internet chat rooms, Facebook thinks it has the answer for you: Rooms.

The new app, released by Facebook Creative Labs on Thursday, it trying to be a modern update of the early online chat scene.

"One of the magical things about the early days of the web was connecting to people who you would never encounter otherwise in your daily life. Forums, message board and chatrooms were meeting places for people who didn't necessarily share geographies or social connections, but had something in common," according to a blog post announcing the new Rooms app.

Users can create "rooms" on any topic and then invite others to join them for the discussion. The rooms look a lot like an Instagram feed, with pictures, text and comments. In pitching the app, the Rooms team emphasized the possibilities for personalization -- from changing the text and emoji on the "like" button to using a different screenname in each room.

You can create your own room and share invitations -- in the form of QR codes -- or go searching across the Internet and social media for QR code invitations to rooms that interest you. Take a screenshot of the QR and that room will be accessible to you the next time you open the app. So where to find the invites? Instagram seems to be a good place to start, searching the hashtag #rooms.

In other Facebook news, Mark Zuckerberg busted out some pretty serious Chinese language skills during an appearance Tsinghua University in Beijing. He did the entire half-hour Q&A in Mandarin, even cracked a few jokes.

Humphrey, Katie, Star Tribune

According to the New York Times he started by saying: "Hello everyone. Thanks for coming. I'm very glad to be in Beijing. I love this city. My Chinese is really a mess, but I study using Chinese every day."

He's apparently been working on Mandarin since 2010, partly to win over the Chinese family of his wife, Priscilla Chan, and as a personal challenge. Learning the language, he said, also helps him learn more about Chinese culture.

All that could come in handy, too, if he wants to make nice with Chinese censors. Facebook, for the most part, is blocked in China.

Here's the video he posted on Facebook. I don't speak Chinese, but it's fun to check out. If the whoops and applause from the crowd are any indication, people were impressed.

Post by Mark Zuckerberg.