At the end of June 2022, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the future modernization of its social network, Facebook. The objective is threefold: to offer a new, more up-to-date look, to rethink the news feed by offering content from unknown users, and to add new features. One of them aims to modify the thematic groups on Facebook to make them more intuitive and collaborative.
Facebook groups will have a new interface reminiscent of Discord
In a statement released on June 28, 2022, Meta announced the rollout of new features to quickly find and join a Facebook group. Groups allow Facebook users to come together around the same passion, the same theme or the same interest.
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This new interface sees the appearance of a sidebar located on the left of the screen allowing access to all the groups joined by a user. ” It lists your groups and the latest activity in 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 “says Facebook.
For users of the Discord application, this bar is very similar to the one that can be found on the messaging and videoconferencing service, in particular used by video game players.
As we can see, the sidebar on the left of the new interface offered by Facebook is very similar to the one used by Discord for several years now. Pictures: Facebook & Discord.
Towards the creation of a real community through discussion channels
From now on, each group has a new menu listing the events, the home page and a little novelty: discussion channels. Users of the same group will have the possibility of exchanging around common interests. These channels will be available in several formats:
- Message channels will allow certain users to meet to discuss among themselves only using messages written around the same theme.
- Audio channels allow group members to join or leave an audio chat in real time. Users will be able to communicate with each other using voice.
- Publishing channels will allow users to access certain types of publications according to their interests. Let’s imagine that a user has joined a group around Football, a publication channel can be created specifically to have access only to publications related to a single championship. This will allow the group’s publications to be sorted according to a specific theme.
Again, these additions are irremediably reminiscent of Discord, which also offers the same type of functionality on its application. This is not the first time that Meta has taken inspiration from other platforms to add new features to its flagship social network. Facebook stories, for example, are taken from the success of stories on Snapchat in the late 2010s.