In its effort to reduce complexity, Facebook has slowly been turning individual features into their own apps with its founder Mark Zuckerberg once said by "unbundling the big blue app". On November 18th, 2014, the company is launching a standalone app for Groups. The app that is first introduced for iOS and Android could be a great way for enhancing the sharing experience, and could unlock more private sharing outside of the News Feed.
Facebook's main News Feed is where users' interest is focused at. However, it can't fit everything that has special purposes, and this is where Groups steps in. Groups works great for communication around projects, but when the feature is at the core of Facebook, controls are confusing, slow, buried far inside, and it's not that usable and popular enough on mobile.
"Groups are buried," said Shirley Sun, Project Manager for the app. "The main problem they were facing was disorganized conversation."
Facebook's Groups has about 700 million user active very month putting 2.5 billion posts, photos, comments, and likes. By making the feature standalone, Groups is another standalone app that could really "stand alone".
Groups is more into a rich content-focused social feed service. It is essentially a replication of the traditional News Feed of photos, links, and status updates, all in a smaller scale. The "mini-Facebook" allows users to see things from other people in the group, predetermined by the privacy settings of the post and the group's.
Despite Google and Yahoo! are competing hard to dominate group email lists, Groups is something that Facebook is happy to capitalize. With the app, Facebook is aiming to get more people to organize their personal lives and projects, and further enhance the interest in the enterprise Facebook at Work, a product that the company is developing.
"No one is really doing this out there. We think what we offer is unique", said Sun.
Mobile is where the world is developing. As traditional PCs and laptops are reaching their limits in mobility, mobile devices that are smart enough to do heavy computing are seen as the future for online services. When the Facebook first saw this shift in trends, the company released the Messenger app. And since Facebook revealed Creative Labs in January 2014, the company continues to design single-purpose apps that breaks Facebook's many features into smaller pieces. Starting with Paper.
"We are not trying to do something sexy for this app. We are really building a simple and unique tool to get things done," said Sun.
Using the Groups App
The Groups app is similar to Facebook's other dedicated app: it's fluid, intuitive and fun. Designed from Creative Labs, the app is functional and direct. The features of Groups are all there, nothing's changed. It's just cleaner and more mobile-friendly.
After signing-in to Facebook, users' existing Groups will be laid visually in two grids, with little circles displaying titles, cover photos and notification badges. A special notifications setting allows users to mute one or all their Groups for one hour, or until the next morning.
To create a group, users can choose what the group will be about, such as "family", "class", or "teammates". Then the group can be given a title, and set its visibility setting (public/closed/secret). After all is completed, users can then add some friends to the group.
The Groups Discovery section will help users to find others to join based on their friends, ones that are active nearby, or communities related to their interests.
The Groups app doesn't feel different from the core Facebook app. In fact, it feels more like what Facebook used to be. When Facebook broke out Messenger from the main app, it caused a criticisms because users couldn't access Messenger from the main Facebook app. Despite being a standalone app, part of the company's attempt to unbundle Facebook, just like Messenger, Groups is not disappearing from Facebook main app entirely. Users aren't forced to download the app to use Groups on their mobile devices. It's just a complementary for a better experience.
"This app is a complementary, optional experience, designed for people who are already power users," said Sun.
