On October 13th, All Facebook wrote about how the new “look” of Facebook groups was very similar to that of fan pages. Earlier this month at SMX East – NYC, I also heard several online professionals speculate aloud about Facebook merging groups and fan pages by year-end. But when I contacted Facebook late last week, I was told that Facebook continues to “strongly believe in the purpose of Groups for user to user communication around a variety of interests”. And Facebook has since reverted the layout of groups back to the original.
Given all the confusion around groups and fan pages (“I’m a mid-sized company, should I use a fan page or a group?”) and recent speculation, I’m inclined to believe one of two things is going to happen soon:
- I’ve expressed a strong opinion on Facebook fan pages vs. groups and relative strengths of both on this blog before. In the next 3-4 months, I believe the layout of groups will be changed to resemble fan pages in some respects (e.g. allowing group updates and notifications to be added to the feed), while continuing to allow groups to contact members directly (a fan page can’t do this); or
- Groups will look and behave the same as fan pages. I’m less inclined to believe in this as groups continue to make more sense in certain scenarios such as organizing people around a common interest (e.g. fans of Stewie on Family Guy).
What do you think? Drop me a line if you have more definitive information!
- Parneet
2 responses so far ↓
Johanna // October 19, 2009 at 7:56 pm |
Thanks for the info. I logged in this morning to edit the group I’ve stared for my organisation only to find out that the layout now looks like a fan page. So I guess they’ve done it again…
Struggling with the same issues, to have a fan page or a group for a small not-for-profit organisation. I wish Facebook would make up their mind about these two forums, currently they seem too similar (now that the layout is the same) and it’s hard to see the point in crossing over to a fan page.
parneet gosal // October 21, 2009 at 9:53 pm |
Hey Johanna, thanks for writing. Drop me a line at parneet.gosal@gmail.com and if you like, I can take a look at your group and recommend what would work best for you. No charge:-)
Are you still seeing the fan page-like layout for your group?
- parneet