DotNeil.com

The most popular social networks offer users the ability to form and join groups alongside the standard ‘My Profile’ identification system. Groups work on many levels, from matching users to other like minded people, to giving users just something else to do while on a network (give them something to use and they’ll take it, twist it and turn it into something you never knew it could be). Some argue that groups and organisational structures aren’t key to a social web app’s success (see this post by Stowe Boyd), but the hastening growth of Facebook would suggest otherwise. Facebook is a prime mover in group functionality (as anyone who uses the service and follows the development team blog will know), and groups have been integral to the network’s recent growth.

Yesterday saw a blog post from the Facebook developer team regarding the upcoming extension of Facebook group features. The post raised the concern that many Facebook users are already happy with the basic functionality that the groups afforded them, and that by extending the group functionality the network may discourage the smaller groups with an overload of functionality and features. The developers have every right to be concerned by this. Would the average Facebook user choose Paint or Photoshop CS2 when creating a jpeg? The same principle applies to social network features - if you cram in too many, starting a small group could feel like overkill, and the smaller (and no less significant) groups will be lost. Smaller groups are important - they combine to create a significant amount of traffic on the Facebook network, and therefore must be encouraged.

Users want a streamlined service, if you give them too many forms and combo boxes to contend with, they won’t bother to create the ‘This movie is the greatest’ group. For example, someone in my Facebook network started a ‘Cauldwell surname’ group - groups like these simply wouldn’t exist if user’s were given the perception that creating a group had to involve some some constructive input and collaboration. Extending group functionality, and increasing the number of features, would certainly create this perception.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, wants to continue pushing his service into University societies/clubs, for whom Facebook works as a quick, easy, and universal communication management tool. And I see no reason why not; I keep in touch with my friends and receive all my social event invitations through Facebook. This really isn’t as unfortunate as it sounds - why would I want to use SMS and email when I can keep everything centralised and on-line in Facebook? My only question for Zuckerberg is, can his development team keep the current Facebook group culture, whilst also expanding it to include much larger and more constructive groups/societies, or will the audience and perception of groups change with the feature set, just as it does with many other applications and services?

Side note: check this post from Mike Arrington on TechCrunch for what could potentially be an interesting publicity stunt for Facebook (and maybe even Jobster?).