What are Facebook Groups?
Facebook Groups are an adaptation of an existing feature on Facebook. Originally, Facebook users created groups to unite people under a common interest or cause, whether that was a love of Mario Kart or a protest against HSBC.
The majority of interaction in old-style groups occurred on the wall, with users commenting on the given topic. Where groups were once slightly tangential to the Facebook experience, they are now intended as a space where users can share information with a select group of friends.
How does it work?
Unlike a Facebook Page, you need a personal account in order to set up a group.
Once you’ve chosen a particular cause or topic, you can invite select Facebook friends to join. Alternatively you can open up the group to anyone, meaning anyone who searches for your topic can find and join your group.
Once you’ve created a group, it works much like a generic collaboration tool might – except everything is contained within Facebook. You can instant message anyone in your group who is online, create and share ‘documents’ (these really just look like Facebook Notes), share photos, videos, links and events all on the wall.
Any time anyone posts a reply to something you have posted, you receive a notification.
Who will use the new Facebook Groups?
While group collaboration tools might normally associated with work and communicating with colleagues, it seems Facebook wants to bring this process into personal networks.
The example Facebook itself gives is sharing photos with family – so images of your newborns may not be something you want to share with your entire network, but you do want to ensure your parents see them. So you create a group where you can post these photos and discuss them in a private space.
We’ve defined audience groups and their activities on Facebook Places by adapting Forrester’s generic social technographics.
Creators
- Will be naturally drawn to creating groups, posting content and collaborating on projects with their networks.
- May join, contribute to and collaborate in groups which have been listed as public.
Conversationalists
- Will join public and private groups which take their interest and contribute to ongoing discussions.
Critics
- Will see groups as a way to exercise their ‘editing’ skills, providing feedback on documents, links , ideas and images posted.
- Will participate in wider discussions to improve or change – such as an R&D project.
Collectors
- Will join public and private groups which take their interest – though unlike conversationalists, they will primarily use these to gather and organise information and content rather than to connect with others.
- Will subscribe to notifications for particularly interesting content or discussions.
Joiners
- Like conversationalists and critics, will actively seek out and join public and private groups which take their interest, though they may not contribute any content.
Spectators
- Will join groups to which they are specifically invited. These are likely to be private groups created by their existing networks.
Facebook Groups – a space for collaborative R&D?
The collaborative nature of groups makes it a potentially interesting mechanic for conducting R&D sessions.
The key here is the three different privacy settings for the new groups – open to all users, closed and invite-only, and secret. Each setting allows for different formats – a large-scale open, crowd-sourced idea generation group versus a smaller ‘focus-group’ type format for the nitty gritty of insightful R&D.
