Facebook revamps Groups, but it's a mixed blessing

Friend lists are so yesterday. Facebook has just announced a total overhaul of the Groups feature, designed to make it easier to share things with the groups of friends who are likely to care about them, without spamming the rest of your Facebook contacts. The new Groups are private by default, which is a big change from the previous publicly-searchable default. Group Chat has also been added, and Facebook says it was one of their most requested features.

You can also change the notifications settings for your group and run it like an email list. Group spam can be held to a minimum because -- wait for it -- you can finally unsubscribe from a thread! Unlike with Facebook messages sent to multiple recipients, you can just opt out, and stop getting notifications for a given thread. Subscribe again later from the group wall if you want to jump back in.

That's the good side of the new Groups. The downside is that you don't have to accept an invitation to be added to a group. You're just in, and you have to go find the "leave group" link on the group page to get out. Also, email notifications are on by default, although they're easy enough to turn off.

All in all, the new Groups makes it a lot easier to share with your various social circles on Facebook, but -- as with anything else Facebook does -- you'll want to take some time to adjust your notification settings to your liking.

[I just had a friend force me into a group simply by inviting me -- no consent was required at all. Crazy! -Ed]

Tags: facebook, groups, socialnetworking