Facebook is adding new management tools and features for groups today, as the company increasingly tries to encourage meaningful conversations and sees tight-knit communities as one way to do that.
Group administrators will now be able to format their posts with larger text, block quotes, and bulleted lists. All groups will also now be able to use Facebook’s mentorship feature, which allows administrators to pair people up to work together on skill development or other support programs.
More groups are gaining the ability to offer subscriptions, too, letting them create separate content and conversations for dedicated members. That feature was introduced last June, but it’s still limited to groups that Facebook chooses to partner with.
Admins are also gaining the ability to easily inform members on how their post violates a rule, sort through previous member activity by date range, and search through membership requests by name.
They’re small steps individually, but they speak to Facebook’s interest in making groups a more vibrant part of the site. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg debuted features last May that made groups a bit more prominent. “People want to be a part of meaningful communities,” he said at the time.
Groups had 1.4 million users at the time, according to TechCrunch. Facebook considered 200 million of those to be “meaningful.”
Facebook also said last year that group content would have a larger presence in the News Feed. “Group content tends to inspire a lot of conversation,” Adam Mosseri, who at the time was leading the News Feed but is now in charge of Instagram, told Wired. “Communities on Facebook are becoming increasingly active and vibrant.”
English
Español