The New Style Facebook Group: What’s It All About Then?
Anyone who ‘does’ Facebook will probably have noticed some changes this week, with the evolution of Groups into something much more closely resembling Pages. Groups were the original home for people to gather in honour of a shared cause or interest, but were also widely used by brands and companies before the introduction of the more advanced Pages.
It is a common quandary among clients who have built large Group memberships whether to ditch their Group in favour of Pages – which offer more functionality including custom tabs and wall posts that appear in members’ news streams. The trouble is that Facebook has never offered a simple way to migrate a Group across to a Page and the only option is a manual switch, meaning that some members may get left behind.
Here are a couple of examples from clients:
A Facebook Page for Escape Studios (just launched!) and The Argento Wine Club Group
While the new style Groups have a similar look and feel to Pages, they have yet to incorporate many of the more sophisticated features. Apart from the aesthetic changes, the only practical difference is that activity will now appear in news feeds and users will be able to able to comment directly from their own home page stream.
Many people are asking “why bother keeping both?” when it would seem logical to merge the two, give everyone the same functionality and save the confusion over which to choose. Facebook’s take is that Groups are for societies, causes and fan clubs, whereas Pages are expressly corporate.
It will be interesting to see how the Groups vs Pages debate evolves in light of these changes. Do let us know your thoughts on the subject.
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Oscar Del Santo
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Clive Andrews
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