Are you a member of a Facebook Group or an adminstrator of a Faceboobook Group? Then you are going to see some dramatic changes when you take a look at your Group this week (did you know there are currently over 45 million Facebook Groups?).

Until now, Group activities have been isolated to the group page. This week Facebook have made changes to Facebook Groups – changes are being rolled out across all groups over this week if you don’t see the changes yet.

In summary:

• Facebook Groups will now look similar to PagesFirst, we revamped the design for Groups so that they look similar to other pages and profiles with a Wall that summarises all the recent activities of people within the group and a Publisher that enables members to share their content.

• Facebook Group activities, which previously only appeared in the group, will now be delivered to your News Feed – you will see stories when one of your friends posts within a group rather than when all members post.

• You will be able to interact with Groups directly from the News Feed stories or make comments on these stories directly from your home page. You can choose to see only group-related stories on your home page by sorting by Groups from the filters on the left-hand side.

Facebook comments that while Groups and Pages now look the same, they still serve different purposes. Groups are for fostering member-to-member collaboration, while Pages remain the best way to broadcast messages to your fans if you are a business, organisation, public figure or other entity.

Facebook Groups historically have had a cap at 5,000 members – I’m not sure if that has changed or will change – what is clear is that Facebook is looking to make our content be that on Facebook pages or groups easy to access from our home page.

However the changes are not welcomed by many Facebook Group administrators or members who preferred the old version and many are asking for the option to stay with the old version of Facebook Groups.

If you are a member of a Facebook Group or an adminstrator for a Facebook page, what’s your thoughts on the changes?

Comments

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 9:06 am and is filed under Networking. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: Krishna De is an award winning brand engagement strategist and author. She guides executives in how to create high performing businesses with a focus on building compelling and engaging corporate brands, employer brands and the personal brand of leaders using traditional and social media platforms. You can access her articles and podcasts at 'Biz Growth News' and subscribe to her ezine 'Biz Growth Express' for exclusive articles, free masterclasses and resources about branding, marketing and social media