Last week we wrote about Facebook testing out a new design for Facebook groups which is almost identical to Facebook Pages. As of today, that new design has become official. One significant component of the upgraded version of groups is that updates to them will now be delivered to the homepage News Feed. With the new design the Pages versus Groups debate will continue to rage on.
It’s clear that the design of groups is almost identical to Facebook Pages and at this point there are few benefits of using groups over Pages which makes me think that the debate is moot to a certain extent. This new groups design also make one wonder whether or not groups will become a platform for applications. With over 45 million groups, it would only make sense to grant developers access to them.
For now we’ll have to wait and see how the groups evolve but this is most definitely a significant upgrade. While I’d like to personally see Facebook Pages and groups merge together, many users argue that Groups have their own use case. With tons of invites to groups about different issues I’ve stopped using them for the most part, however many users still flock to groups daily.
Do you think this redesign is useful? Should Facebook just merge groups and Pages or is there a reason for keeping groups?
Source:http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/10/facebook-groups-redesign-becomes-official/
