Facebook is currently testing a new feature for Groups that will make it easier for people to find and join new groups. The new “Discover” tab will allow people to look through Facebook Groups sorted by category. Both closed and public groups will be featured, and users will also be able to see local Groups and Groups that people in their circle of friends are part of. In addition, they will be able to see Groups that are currently trending among their friends and in their local area.
A total of 25 different categories are featured, including topics such as support and comfort, networking, buy and sell, sports, parenting, animals and pets, food, and hobby and leisure. Each of the category pages will show the top groups according to popularity as well as groups that a user’s friends are part of.
Prior to the Discover feature, users had to either type keywords into the Groups search bar or receive an invitation from a friend.
Around one billion people use Groups every month, making it one of the social network’s more popular features besides the News Feed. The new Discover feature is expected to help people find even more groups that are aligned with their interests that they might not realize exist.
Higher group participation expected to boost time spent on site
Right now, only a selected group of users have access to the new feature on Facebook’s Android and iOS apps, but it is expected to be rolled out to everyone some time soon. People in the test group report that the new feature is easy to use, but it could be tweaked further prior to a widespread release.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Facebook’s Vice President of Product, Will Cathcart, said: “As widely used as Groups is, if you think about it through the view of any individual person, I think people have tons of groups in their lives that they don’t actually use. If you think of every team you’re involved in — groups of people at work, social clubs you have — my bet is that for 9 out of 10 of them you don’t have a Facebook group.”
Facebook is hoping to get more people to join Groups in yet another attempt to boost the amount of time users spend on the social network each day, with the current average being 50 minutes per day.
