the new facebook "groups" is absolutely worthless

Facebook made a huge fuss about introducing the new Facebook "Groups" as a complete game-changer for the way people use Facebook.  Zuckerberg positioned it as the Facebook within Facebook, attempting to re-invent the exclusivity that the site was built on.  It looks like Facebook's starting to get worried about becoming too mainstream and eventually irrelevant in an increasingly crowded social media space.

Yet here we are, almost 3 weeks after the launch, and the majority of Facebook still hasn't noticed or doesn't understand what's going on. What's weirder is the lack of conversation about how horrible the application really is.

I was excited to see what all the fuss was about and created a group when the app became available (which Facebook users were not notified about, again fostering confusion).  I made a group with just my close friends from high school, who didn't understand that the functionality of the "group" application was really any different.  They just complained that the interface was ugly, cluttered, and confusing.  It's true, the old "groups" was much easier on the eye and served essentially the same purpose.

In addition, the groups are formatted to be opt-out.  You're not invited to a group, you're added without your permission and then can chose to remove yourself (it took me a few minutes to find the action for doing this as well).  Technically you could be added to the group "I'm a serial killer" and publicly be a member until you logged into your Facebook account, noticed, and then found the tiny link that lets you remove yourself.  Where's the exclusivity in getting spammed by all your Facebook "friends"?

The only thing redeeming about the groups app is the "group chat feature", which automatically puts you in a chat room with all the group members.  Fun for a group with your five close friends, not so practical for a group with 150 sorority sisters.  Especially when there's no way to close the chat.  Unless you want to sign off of Facebook chat entirely you're going to get bombarded with endless messages.

The fact is, users can already get the exclusivity that Facebook is shooting for with the applications provided.  Old groups can be made secret, users can create message threads with their friends, and chat enables "lists" so users can appear online only to certain people.  The only thing they're really adding is the group chat feature, which can easily stand on its own without the group redesign.

I know that whenever Facebook comes out with new formatting people whine and ask for the old Facebook back--but in this case I think the whining is more than justified.  Facebook definitely needs to make some changes in the functionality for the new "groups".  Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if they scrapped the project altogether.