The great unbundling of Facebook shows no sign of slowing down. The social network today rolled out Facebook Groups, an app that it says is aimed at making it easy to stay in touch with family, collaborate on projects, plan trips and offer support to friends. According to Facebook, 700-million people use Facebook Groups to stay in touch.
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Like Messenger, which was a catalyst of discomfort amongst users but last week reached 500 million users a month, Facebook Groups app is a standalone app available on Android and iOS today.
In a statement, Facebook said:
“Today, we’re introducing a new Facebook Groups app that helps people share faster and more easily with all the groups in their life. We built this app with the people who use Groups the most in mind”.
Read more: Facebook Messenger now has 500 million monthly users
Once a user has downloaded the app and opens it they will see their Facebook Groups in one place. Frequently used Groups are at the top, and navigating between two each group is easy. To start a new group one needs to only tap ‘Create’.
Of course, it would not be a Facebook app without it intruding on your space, so Facebook has stayed in character by adding a Discover tab to the Facebook Groups app that suggests groups based on Pages you’ve liked, groups your friends are in and where you live.
If you are wondering what will happen to your current groups within the main Facebook app and on your desktop, “You can still use Facebook Groups in the main Facebook app and on desktop, and over time we’ll continue to make those experiences faster and better, too”.
It will be interesting to see how people respond to the app. Knowing Facebook, if the response is not good enough, it will simply disable all the other ways to start a Group on Facebook and force users to download Facebook Groups. But for now, this app sounds like a great idea for users who use Group chats frequently.
