Facebook’s New Group Pages

Facebook launched their new group pages that seem to offer members an easier way of communicating.  You can now chat with members of the group in real time all at once, the group posts show up in news feeds, you can create and share docs, and you can set up your notifications to let you know when users interact on it.  Oh, and how can I forget….you no longer invite people to join your groups….you add them.  Bam.

But before I go off and rave about the new groups, I also found some other things I don’t necessarily like:

A couple years ago, we created a group of Beer lovers called “The Brewskies” that travelled around tasting beers and blogging at Michigan Breweries.  I managed our facebook group page, using it to post photos and information on these travels.  We’re a small group, and it was a perfect way to avoid designing a website and still getting the message across for gatherings.

When Facebook launched their new groups, I was a bit bummed that current group pages in existence didn’t get the makeover.  Until a couple things I noticed changed my mind.

As a group, we posted photos of various times we got together and had fun.  The new group pages, however, don’t have galleries.  We also own the domain name www.thebrewskies.com and had it point to our group page.  If you weren’t logged into Facebook, the information still showed as to what the group was about.  After testing the new group page, you can’t see anything unless you’re logged into facebook.

At this point in time, photo galleries and page visibility is a deterrent for me to push everything over to the new group page and delete the old one.  (At least for my Brewskie group) But if the level of interaction between members increase on the new ones, well, who am I to complain?

—————–UPDATE————-

I was almost ready to give a thumbs up about the photo gallery situation but found something Facebook may want to fix.  –

After posting a photo to the new group page, I opened it up, and to my surprise there was a link that said “See All Photos”

I clicked it and it took me to a page that said “Add Photos”

I thought this was the answer I was looking for, but after uploading a bunch of photos, I quickly realized a flaw in Facebook’s Group Page.  It made every individual photo that I uploaded into an individual post, causing my Brewskie Group Page to be cluttered with photo posts going all the way down to the botom.

Bummer…

—————–FEATURE UPDATE————-

In new groups, when you comment on a post, that post rises to the top of the page.