Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Facebook Groups

Facebook groups have a powerful way of uniting people or separating people based on certain interests. When I first joined Facebook, I remember of the first groups I was invited to was Facebook is better than Myspace. Many Facebook groups are based on this competitive nature. There are groups for various professional sports teams to prove which teams have the most fan support. In addition, there are certain groups that compete in a race to get to 1,000,000 members before some other group. In this way, certain groups separate people based on their allegiance to a professional team.

Although many Facebook groups are simply joined for pleasure, other groups can be very beneficial. If a group project is assigned at school or work, Facebook becomes an easy way to communicate with certain colleagues or students whom we may not know very well. The group application on Facebook is extremely valuable for any kind of group project. One of the most common types of groups that undoubtedly we have all come across is the "I need phone numbers group." Instead of having to run into all your friends just to get their phone numbers, you can create a group and it provides an easy forum to get everyone's phone number back. However, with so many of these groups, people become annoyed with how many different groups they have to post their phone number. It appears that many people have become embarrassed to even start a similar group for fear of annoying people.

One of my friends got a little too creative with his title in which it appeared that he died. He was just looking for everyone's phone number, but certain people became confused thinking he had actually died. I guess the lesson is we should always read the group information before we jump to any conclusions.

5 comments:

  1. Facebook groups are great ways for people who share interests to connect, but I have to be honest- I think the the volume of groups available deters anything meaningful from coming out of these groups. There are groups for everything and people often join things just for the sake of joining.

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  2. I agree with your point about "lost phone-need numbers" groups. These are extremely annoying. By now, I would think that you could easily go into your friends' pages who made these groups and find the numbers you need through the old ones without having to create another. Or you could just simply ask people personally for their numbers again. Tough decisions..

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  3. I have definitely noticed the increase in "lost phone-need numbers group" and also agree that they have become very annoying. I have actually had one friend lose their phone and make a group twice. I didn't understand what they he just didn't look to the other group, as Kimberly mentioned. Some of these groups receive so many posts it's remarkable. Just another example of the efficiency of Facebook.

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  4. I am guilty of the "lost phone" sin. I hated the groups until I then lost my phone. But you make a great point about groups and how there are competitive ones and ones just for fun. Some get very serious and hateful too.

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  5. Interesting, as this is all new to me, and a use for the groups that I never imagined. The problem with groups on these sites, and they really are bulletin boards, as opposed to the older media that Google and Yahoo groups represents, which are listservs or discussion lists, is that you have to go look at the group, rather than having the new post sent to you. That's called pull, as opposed to push, and push is always going to be more effective. That's why, what I've found on Facebook is an increasing number of messages in my inbox that are not personal, but announcements sent to large numbers. I find that very annoying.

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