Facebook updates Groups as well as how to find them

Although Facebook is beset with challenges such as a whole host of new and modern social communication platforms, and a seemingly never-ending list of scandals it is still the biggest social network on the planet. The size of Facebook means it might move slower than new specialized platforms like Discord, but it also means that it can simply copy new features and bring them to a much wider audience. That is exactly what is happening here, Facebook is copying one of Discord’s best features. Let’s check it out now.

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Facebook’s parent company Meta has announced updates to how Facebook will organize Groups in the future and how you will be able to find them. The announcement also includes news about “channels”, which is what it is calling smaller and more casual environments, within Facebook Groups. Channels are a prominent feature of Discord servers, which allow Discord mods to compartmentalize and organize different conversations with their communities.

The Meta announcement also says that these Community channels will also have audio channels where, “admins and members can casually jump in and out of audio conversations in real time.” Again, this is a prominent Discord feature and we recently reported on how Discord has improved its audio channel feature.

The other big news from Meta is that Facebook will soon get a new sidebar, which will make it much easier to find Facebook Groups and move between them more quickly. The sidebar will, “… list your groups and the latest activity within them, like new posts or chats you haven’t yet seen. [It will also allow you to] pin your favorite groups so they show up first, discover new groups or even create your own.”

All-in-all this news marks a rather useful update to Facebook Groups. It is no secret that Discord has grown exponentially in recent years, moving on from being a primarily gamer-focused service to becoming the hub for many different types of online communities that used to call Facebook Groups their home. It will be interesting to see if Facebook is able to recapture some of these lost communities.

If you are still a regular Facebook user, be sure to stay vigilant while on the social network. Lots of scammers have been targeting Facebook users recently and just yesterday we reported on a phishing scam involving Facebook Messenger chatbots. Be careful out there.