The Dojo

In the wee hours of the morning (for us down under anyway) Mark Zuckerberg, aka the big Z, announced some pretty major changes to the Facebook platform. The most interesting of which was the introduction of a new ‘Groups’ functionality. This new feature basically allows users to chat, share, manage events and even documents with a select group of friends. Whilst this will help the awkward situation of sharing something you really wouldn’t want your Granny to see (yes my Granny is on Facebook and she’s 82 – go the silver surfers!), it does have the danger of a) segregating communities on Facebook into small cliquey cyclones and b) from a user perspective could get pretty difficult to manage. How do you make sure you always share the right things with the right groups?

Another worry that I’ve come across today, is companies being afraid they will no longer be able to get the level of details on their Facebook users as they can now. I think the point to note here is social media isn’t about collecting dirt on your user and using it to target them, but instead finding ways to generate some interesting content and conversation that makes them want to connect and share with you.

To battle some of these issues the all mighty Facebook have added three settings to the new groups functionality: closed, open and private. ‘Closed’ hides content from those who don’t belong to the group. The ‘open’ setting means the whole world (even those not on Facebook) can see your groups activity and finally ‘private’ which means no one can see anything and they won’t even know your group exists.

One major benefit I can see for companies, is to use Groups as a way to ‘invite’ a select group (as a cross section of your user base on Facebook) to trial and discuss ideas. Thereby creating a private and collaborative research tool with your real target audience. But…

I’m still to make up my mind on it… is it a good thing that you could connect with a much more intimate and personal group of people to share your brand and its actions, or is it making Facebook more complicated and segregated as an online community? What do you think?