Facebook Groups

My Facebook Groups Experience: Head’s a-Spinning

October 25, 2010 By noemi Leave a Comment

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?

Facebook Groups to Give Us More Control?

October 12, 2010 By noemi 1 Comment

Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, have been under a lot of fire for sucky privacy features. Zuckerberg is quite excited about a new feature that they have released: Facebook Groups. You might be asking, “Groups? Hasn’t this been around for a while?”

Well, they have a NEW feature called Groups that is different from whatever you think. The important thing about this new application is that users can have more control over their privacy. Think about it as being able to put your friends into – literally – groups and then being able to choose what information you want to share with them.

The new Facebook Groups aims to mimic human behavior in real life. If you think about it, you actually categorize people in your life. You have friends that you drink with, but you may not necessarily share private information with them. You have friends that you run to when you have problems, and they probably know everything about you. With this new Facebook feature, you can basically do the same thing online. It will make selective disclosure of information (including photos, status messages, etc.) easier for Facebook users.

Despite the excitement of Mark Zuckerberg over Groups, critics are already making their voices heard. Larry Magrid, co-director of ConnectSafely.org, says:

“The only worry I have is that friends can add people to the group, so if you create a group and are in a group you have to be aware of not only who you add but who others add. As long as you are aware of who is in the group it can be a great privacy tool. If it gets out of hand it could give you a sense of false security.”

Personally, I am neither excited nor skeptical about the development. My rule of thumb: don’t put anything on Facebook that you don’t want others to see or know. Simple enough, isn’t it?