Facebook
Facebook’s mobile app used to encapsulate all the features of its website. But in an effort to reduce complexity, the company has slowly been turning individual features into their own apps. Examples so far include the Facebook Messenger app and Paper, a Flipboard-esque viewer for stories shared in your Facebook feed. Now, Facebook is giving Groups the standalone treatment.
The new Groups app, available on iOS and Android, offers a convenient place to do just one thing: Interact with your Facebook Groups. For the 700 million people who use Facebook Groups each month, this could make navigation and other interactions more straightforward.
In the main Facebook app, you get to Groups by tapping the More tab and then scrolling down to your groups and tapping again to open a full list of your member Groups. By comparison, the Groups app opens to a clean grid of circular Group icons. The ones you interact with most are positioned at the top of the screen. Once you enter a group, posts and images take up the full width of the screen for a more enjoyable viewing experience. As before, the option to write a post or share a photo sit at the top of the Group page.
The app offers more granular in-app notification controls, so you can select what updates you want to be notified about. And if news in a Facebook Group is super important, you can choose to get push notifications whenever someone posts. The interface also makes it easier to see what groups have new content to check out. Facebook included a Discover button in the app too, so you can peruse suggested groups based on where live, Groups your friends are in, and pages you’ve liked.
If you’re only a casual Groups user, you’re not being forced to download another app: Facebook is not removing Groups from the main app—at least for now. But with Messenger and now Groups broken out, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a Facebook Events app in the not-too-distant future.
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