Facebook seeks to win back the hearts of its users by taking inspiration from its competitors. And for the redesign of its groups, the social network takes up the principle of the Discord discussion platform.
While it has been losing momentum for some time, Facebook is preparing to modify its group system. It must be said that the social network is experiencing an unprecedented crisis. For the first time in its history, it lost followers in the fourth quarter of 2021. Although the decline was very modest – the number of daily active users fell from 1.930 billion to 1.929 billion – it is still unprecedented. . This is all the more worrying since the other applications belonging to the Meta group – Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger – are also struggling to recruit new subscribers. Finally, the group showed a marked slowdown in its growth. This is in particular due to its loss of popularity with teenagers, who prefer TikTok to it. Facebook is therefore seeking to modernize to remain attractive and does not hesitate to draw ideas from its competitors. Recently, we learned that Facebook was preparing to redesign its news feed to look more like that of its Chinese opponent. This time, it is on the side of the messaging service Discord that the interest of the giant of social networks leans.
In a June 28 press release, Meta announced that Facebook Groups will evolve. These communities are part of its strength of the platform: in 2019, Facebook groups were used by 1.4 billion users every month. Meta will modify their interface in order to facilitate their organization, and add new functions to them, such as spaces with discussion channels. New features that are reminiscent of how Discord works…
Facebook groups: a new menu and multiple channels
In order to improve navigation, Facebook will add a new sidebar, located on the left, whose operation is more or less the same as that of Discord. This menu will “list your groups and the latest activity within them, such as new posts or threads you haven’t seen yet. You can also pin your favorite groups to show up first, discover new groups, or even create your own. For example, if you want quick access to the latest recipes from your cooking group, you can now pin it to the top, find related groups, and get inspired to create your own.“, explains Facebook.
–
The platform will add a menu within each group, which includes events, shops and different channels. Because yes, Facebook will also give administrators the possibility of creating different channels within the group – like sorts of subgroups – which will each have their own publication thread. An operation that is also reminiscent of Discord. There will be three different types of formats:
- Chat channels, which are conversations where members can chat in a Messenger chat;
–
- Audio channels, a new function that allows administrators to create audio rooms that members can join in real time and leave whenever they want (the famous Discord rooms);
–
- Feed channels, which focuses on a more specific topic. A very practical way to better organize and structure the members within a group with a fairly broad theme!
These new features will arrive in the coming months.
–
