4 things Facebook must do to Facebook Groups!

The fun and Utility of Social sites, like Facebook is that they help bring the physical world closer, virtually. People become part of sites like FB not only to stay connected with their existing contacts, but also to find and connect with people who they would like to get back in touch.

Recently I became part of a group, on Facebook, started to reunite our School time batch mates. FB, with its international popularity and now with more than 350 million users sure that within no time 20 of our old time mates became part of this group.

This was the first time that I actually started using the Groups feature on FB. Somehow FB seems to have no focus on making the Groups feature ‘great’. There are many things that FB product team seems to have missed out on. A person like me, who also uses LinkedIn extensively, can clearly see the primitiveness of the FB groups feature.

4 things that FB needs to add to the groups feature are:

1. An option to be notified of any activity, within the group at the time of joining the Group.

2. The notifications can be separate for the nano-expressions, uploads and joining, like:
Discussion Board post
Wall post
Pictures uploading
Link uploading
Event Creation
New Members

To enable members to choose what they want to be notified about.

3. Settings for groups should be adjustable for all the individual groups that I become part of.

4. Ability for group members to create a conversation or ‘group chat’ using the FB chat application.

Small differences in the usability aspect of a website make features hits or misses. LinkedIn groups see a lot of activity because someone has given a thought on making them active. Most of the FB groups eventually turn dormant, and some basic notifications, implemented correctly, can turn this around.