Facebook unveils new Groups feature as part of major site upgrade

Social networking giant Facebook has unveiled a suite of new features on its site, including the ability to create user groups and download an individual’s entire profile, in a move chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says will allow users to connect with others more easily.

But the updates are only a few of several the company has planned for the next few weeks, with Zuckerberg saying the company has been in “lockdown” ahead of a complete site redesign.

Mocks founder Lara Solomon says the new features, especially the “Groups” function, will give businesses help in collaborating online.

“It looks as though it’ll be positive for business as long as it’s used in the right way. People still struggle to understand what’s a personal profile, a page and a group and this will be really good for businesses to communicate.”

“People are looking for ways to interact and even for smaller groups of four or five people, so this is all about working together in terms of the cloud. It’s really going to help collaboration.”

The company said the new updates are an attempt to allow users to control their data on Facebook, where it goes and who sees it. “We hope these tools bring you more confidence,” Zuckerberg says.

The biggest upgrade is the new groups feature. Zuckerberg said today the biggest problem with the site is helping users interact and share information with friends in different situations, while only giving out certain pieces of information to others.

“For example, you might want to share photos from a family vacation with just your family, send a video from a party to just the people who were there, invite co-workers to an office event, play a game with a few friends, or use a running website with your friends who like jogging.”

The result – a brand new version of Facebook Groups. A Group allows users to share information only with a small group of friends who are able to share things within a private space. Zuckerberg notes the default setting on a group is “Closed”, meaning only members can post and see content.

Users can post photos, chat, and an associated email list also allows users to update other group members even when you aren’t on the site. The administrator of a group can choose the members, icon and the email address ending in a “@groups.facebook.com” URL.

Each group contains an individual wall for members to post content on, while members can also create and edit documents, similar to the Google Docs network.

Facebook vice president of product Chris Cox took the stage at the event, saying that while the new Groups feature doesn’t replace the old one, “you can’t make them any more”.

The second update is the ability to have users download their profile data. Everything in a profile including messages, wall posts, status updates and pictures can be downloaded into a zip file.

According to TechCrunch, Zuckerberg says this could allow users to download their information, delete their account, and that port that information in a new profile on another site.

“To protect your information, this feature is only available after confirming your password and answering appropriate security questions,” he said in the blog post.

The last update is a dashboard for applications, which will allow users to see just how much information is being given out to apps and how your security settings are set up. Following from the company’s update to allow more simplified privacy controls, Zuckerberg says the update will give users access to a simplified, centralised dashboard for app data.

“As this rolls out, in your Facebook privacy settings, you will have a single view of all the applications you’ve authorised and what data they use. You can also see in detail when they last accessed your data. You can change the settings for an application to make less information available to it, or you can even remove it completely.”

But according to TechCrunch, these updates are just the beginning and a complete site redesign is on the way.

“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the event today by acknowledging that they have been in what they call “lockdown” for several weeks. And he indicated that the result of it would be several new launches over the coming weeks and months. One of those will be a redesign, which is meant to unify the look of the site.”