Facebook Groups Application: Huddle Up
Published by Rodney Rumford September 8th, 2007 in Facebook, Facebook Groups.
Rating: 
Facebook groups is a big part of what makes facebook so appealing and engaging, so we have decided to review this facebook functionality. Facebook groups is an actual application. Think of a topic, and most likely there is a group of like minded individuals gathering in groups on facebook. Groups have a great gravitational pull and work really well for easy assembly of people that share a common interest. The functionality of facebook groups continues to get better (the addition of video about a month ago as an example), but it still has some major functional shortcomings.
Groups are actually a great way to have content and like minded users concentrated into nice vertical silos. Groups have several levels of controls associated with them. Groups can be public, private or invite only. Groups can also be hidden from the group directory. Group owners/admins have the ability to change the group controls as they see fit. Group owners can also email all group members, which is really important for notifications and communicating to the entire group en mass.
It is important to note that once a facebook group is created the name can’t be changed or modified in any way. So choose your group name carefully when you create it. When you join or leave a group it will show up in your Mini-Feed and sometimes the News-Feed. You can also display a list of what groups you belong to on your profile page.
Groups are Free or Sponsored. The majority of groups are of the free type. Sponsored groups are totally customizable and are a premium advertising opportunity for corporations.
With a standard facebook group you can set video and photo controls so that only admins can upload (good idea to keep out spam). Some additional group features:
* Group Description
* News
* Photos
* Videos
* News
* Discussion Board
* Related Events
You can join our Facebook Applications Group that we created here. We have almost 1000 members and the group focuses on facebook applications news and business related topics.
What companies have sponsored facebook groups? Here is small sampling: Apple, Ernst & Young, Experian, Fox, Ford, Gillette, HP, Jansport, Jeep, Virgin Mobile, McDonald’s, Molson, Microsoft, NBA, Pepsi, Nintendo, Red Bull, Crest, Southwest an many many more. Some of these groups are quite large. The Southwest Facebook Group has over 50,000 members.
Some of these companies have also created facebook apps. Red Bull created the very popular RoShamBull facebook application (classic Roshambo game).
While I think the facebook groups is a great application, it has definite shortcomings. Combined with the social graph and the ability to invite people from outside of facebook, it is a quite powerful and useful. The main issue I have is that facebook does not do a great job of letting me know what is happening in those groups in an efficient manner. I have to manually go back to my groups list and see what is new. Then I have to drill into the group. This is way too cumbersome and I don’t have time to do this.
The data needs to flow up to the member in a way that they choose. This allows groups to pull members back when there is something that is relevant and interesting to the member.
6 Ways That Facebook Groups Could Be Improved:
* Have data come to members in the form of an update (Daily email, News-Feed, Notification, etc.)
* RSS feed output for all activity
* Allow me to control what group activity displays in my news-feed
* RSS Feed update when my friends join a group, comment, add wall posts, photos or videos
* Ability to add specific applications to a group
* A separate groups api so application developers can write apps to improve the groups features or to pull specific apps info into other apps.
We have chosen the D: All Things Digital Group for our example screen shots. This is a group run by the Wall Street Journal about their annual technology conference.
Facebook Group Details 1
Facebook Group Details 2
Facebook Group Details 3
Photos in Groups: Commets can be added (same for Video).
Facebook Groups: Invite People
Facebook Groups: Recently Joined by Friends & Recent Updates to My Groups
Facebook Sponsored Groups Example: Geico
So how do you use Facebook Groups? What do you like or dislike about the Facebook Groups Application?
Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook groups, facebook groups application
very thorough review rodney… nice job
you are correct, it’s crazy that the only way to find out friends have posted/responded is to go to the group, fb doesn’t notify you?
Also, RSS feeds INTO the group might be useful as well.
@Mark- I think replies specifically to you on discussion topics will generate a note via email that a reply was made.
i’d be really fantastic if facebook groups actually had applications like paypal,or more room for group logo’s.. or even page wallpapers [similar to what myspace allows]
I have concerns regarding The Wall functionality. It can already be noticed that custom walls are normally added to users’ profiles on a current basis.
Opening the groups app to accept a number of apps that satisfy basic criteria would definetely explode the facebook universe. Custom walls and multi-user game apps would definitely expand the service broadcast.
I have a dating group that I have started for a specific group of people but I would like to add an application to it but groups at this stage don’t allow applications. Is there a reason for this?
Thank you…
Is there anyway I can sub divide my groups, currently I have various groups ie: Schools etc, which I would like to brake up into Class of groups, Sports affiliation etc. Is there any help regarding this????
I would love to see a way to integrate other applications into the groups application. Especially useful would be an RSS feed application (such as flog blog) for the groups application - so that groups could post a feed for their news or blog entries and not have to enter that information directly into facebook - as you can do on a regular site or blog. if facebook really wants the groups to work as a hub, they need to let users add apps to the groups app. I recently wrote a blog post about integrating features into a blog - and if it were that easy to add apps to facebook groups Ii bet more people would use them.
Thanks for the review, I think facebook groups is good but has a long way to go.
I think yahoo groups does a much better job actually but the downside is that you need to have a yahoo account to join it.
I think it’s better because you get updates when the group is updated and most importantly for my needs you can upload files like word docs and powerpoint presentations so other members can see them.
In facebook you can’t do this it seems.
- Stan
I wanted to create a group to visually cover and organise my social groups activities past, present and future for the ease of all taking part or not, to appeal to all involved with abilities to take part in some way under the control of appointed admin, i quickly discovered that without the ability to install applications, customize the page beyond four basic options etc… that the group application is infact a dull tool that impairs any creative use through lack of functionality, it could be amazing but is only dissapointing - why is it ‘notepad’ when it could be quite easily ‘word’.
sean