Why You Should You Care About Facebook Groups

Facebook recently announced that they revamped their Groups, making them much more interactive and useful. But, it’s still a bit confusing.

Think of Groups as the ability to have a special “space” on Facebook to interact directly with other members of a Group. Members can communicate with other members, chat online and post documents. These can be for fun (book groups, families, class reunions, etc.), business (work teams, networking, stragetic planning, etc.)…whatever!

Still a bit confused? Here’s an example:

Betty is working on a project with three people she’s Friends with. She creates a Group called “Betty’s Project” and she adds the others to this Group. In addition to being able to post the usual things like links, photos and videos, FB added the ability to post (and edit!) documents. Here’s the cool thing—Betty set up her Group so nonmembers can’t see anything posted on the Group’s page. So, Betty posts the timeline for the project, Wilma posts the budget, Fred updates the budget and Barney keeps track of items as they’re completed. Everyone uses the “chat” feature to communicate with other online Group members—in just one chat window. Very collaborative!

There’s several important things to remember about Groups. First, anyone who is your Facebook Friend can add you to any Group they belong to—without your permission. You can opt out if you want. You’ll see Groups that you belong to on the left side of your Home page.

So, what’s to keep people from adding you willy-nilly to many Groups? If you unsubscribe from a Group someone added you to, they can never add you to another Group.

Second, there are three levels of privacy in a Group:

1. Open: the list of Group members and all content is public.
2. Closed: the list of Group members is public, but content can only be viewed by members. This is the default setting.
3. Secret: the list of Group members and content can only be seen by Group members.

However, your privacy settings are still king. Just because you’re in a Group, it doesn’t mean that all of the Group members can see everything you do. For example, if you have your photos set to “Friends Only,” the only Group members who can see your photos are those you’re actually Friends with.

Finally, you control how much communication you receive from each Group. Click on “Edit Settings” in a Group to select when and how other members communicate with you. I joined a Group with people who LOVE the chat feature…and it was driving me nuts! I turned it off.

Have you joined a Group or set one up? What do you think of this new feature?

Here’s a short video from Facebook about Groups: