A week or so ago, we heard about Facebook Groups, one of the new features rolled out by the social network. Some people were excited, some were skeptical, while others simply didn’t care. To be honest, I read a bit about it and then totally threw the idea out of the window. I just couldn’t be bothered.
Over the weekend, I received two notifications that caught my eye – I was added to groups by friends. I didn’t really pay any attention until this morning, and I what I experienced made my head spin. Seriously.
This is one of the groups I was added to:
So what’s up with the “Secret Group” tag? When someone creates a Group, he or she can set it to secret so as to hide it from everyone else. Duh. Seriously, though, this setting is perfect for those who are really careful about their privacy. People who are not in the group cannot “see” it anywhere, and they have to be invited by someone else who is already in that group. This brings up an interesting flaw: if anyone can add friends to the group, doesn’t this defeat the purpose of keeping security tight? I think that to make this more efficient, only administrators/creators should be able to “approve” membership.
Another thing that made me go “wut?” was the way people in groups can interact. The Group’s page is pretty much like any other page or wall on Facebook, but when posting comments, there does not seem to be a button to click – just hit ENTER. More so, there isn’t a way to delete your comment. What if you made a grammar mistake??? Seriously, what if you want to change what you just posted? You can, however, unsubscribe to a specific post if you don’t want to receive notifications regarding it anymore.
Last thing I tried was the chat. It’s basically a group chat, with all the online members receiving the messages. I think it is still buggy (when is Facebook Chat not buggy anyway) as it does not show the members who are online. When I sent a message, though, they received it and a chat session was begun. (Bear with me with all those black boxes, please.)
So why is my head spinning? I guess because no one in the Group really understood what it was for. We do have a binding factor, but as of the moment, no one can figure out what we can use the Group for. We will figure this out somehow, but I don’t see the need for it right now.
Anyone care to share their Facebook Groups experience? Is it working out for you guys?
