Facebook Introduces Private Groups for Families
There's a new landing page on Facebook that's designed to get families involved in sharing updates, photos, and videos on the social network. The extended family group invite page, available here, lets you create a private group for your family by inviting current Facebook members and entering in the email addresses of those who have yet to join.
Is Facebook after Grandma and Grandpa now that they have mom and dad? You bet.
Creating a family group is simple. After clicking this link, you'll notice the name of the group has already been filled in for you based on whatever your last name is (assuming you're currently logged into Facebook, that is...and aren't we always?). You can edit the name if you like or leave it as is.
You then have the option of inviting more members to join the group. In Step 2, there are boxes provided to enter in the names of your family members already on Facebook. If you need more boxes, just click the green plus sign below. Finally, and likely the reason why Facebook created these groups in the first place, there is an option to invite other people in your family to join Facebook.
You can type in email addresses by hand or import them from your email address book. (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Apple Mail, and many others are supported.)
The group, once created, looks like any other Facebook group with a Member List, Discussion Board, Wall, Events Section, etc. However, there's a big difference between this group and others you'll find on Facebook. It's a completely private group, not visible to anyone else.
Facebook explains this in the "Group Type" box:
This is a secret group. It will not show up in your profile, and only admins can invite members.
In other words, you can post away in here without worries that your online friends will see your activity. The only exception to this, unfortunately, is with the events. When you go to create an event within the group, it's shared either with your local network (in my case that's Tampa Bay) or all of Facebook. The supposedly "secret" group is listed as the host of the event. So much for privacy. It would have been nice to use this feature to track family gatherings, but there's no need to broadcast every anniversary and family reunion to the entire social network that is Facebook.
Sadly, this Events section is yet another example of how Facebook forces public sharing on you even while pretending they're offering you a completely private venue.
Still, assuming you have enough family members willing to join Facebook - and based on these latest statistics, it's likely that you do - this new feature could end up being a great place to communicate and share content with your family. In fact, we expect that this single feature may even lead to an explosion of Facebook sign-ups from Grandmas and Grandpas everywhere. It might even attract some of the younger kids away from MySpace so they can hang out with the family on Facebook. On second thought, maybe not. it might just make Facebook look even more like that uncool place online where all those grownups hang out.
Thanks to AllFacebook for discovering this new feature!
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How do you get to the new groups once you've created them? I can't find a link off my Home or Profile pages! ????
What is the difference between a regular group and this new feature?
I created one just like that, for my family members last year! :) It's been going on for a while...
It also seems that if you tag yourself in a picture uploaded to a private group, it will also break out of the "private" features of the family group.
I agree this feature will be a great boon to Facebook. But I still think it falls short of what many people will want for sharing with their family -- a private place with exactly whom they choose to share with that notifies people in email of new content. I think Facebook will find that the friction of passwords and profiles will keep a lot of grandparents out of Facebook. And not knowing about new content without logging in only works for people that get other value out of facebook then looking at occasional family news.
My 2 cents from the cheap seats.
Paul Gross
CEO, Sampa Corporation
www.sampa.com
For any of the things that still aren't totally private, you can go to Settings, Privacy and manually change the privacy level as a back up.
@Mary: they're "secret" - see above! :)
@John: Wow, good question! I don't know...I just had to dig through my search history to find the link. Not good for grandma!
Hey Sarah,
We offer simple and private sharing for families on Ramamia. It's similar to what Facebook is offering here. We've been beta testing for the past 3 months amongst a few thousand families and so far a lot of people are liking this as an alternative private silo for families. Even though Facebook rocks, it's gravitating more towards being "open" like twitter than closed off. Because of this your average internet user will want a separate place to keep things completely private for their family. Would love to hear more comments from everyone.
-Jason
I had the same issue with events - you actually can make them completely private (hidden from search, etc), but it's on a different screen, after you've already selected a network for it.
Makes absolutely no sense, and I have yet to test and see if it's actually closed to the network...but especially for family events, it's really silly to not have it private by default. I'm not really going to invite all of San Francisco to passover at my sister-in-law's house. :)
I finally found out how to get to these groups. This is way, way, way too many steps (page loads are bad):
1. Go to your profile (not home).
2. Click on the Info tab.
3. Scroll down to the Groups section.
4. Click the "See all" link.
5. Arrive at the page with all of your groups, including the secret ones.
6. Click on the secret group you were looking for
IMHO, this needs some serious work! :-)
From what I've seen, Ramamia does this better: it keeps it all separate, and doesn't force members of the older generation to signup for a Facebook account.
@Shawn: UGH. FB doesn't understand the MEANING of private.
@Sarah... hi Sarah, they have been secret all along!
By the way, it is very important to keep the link! :)
You can also just type the name of the group in the search box (after you login) and you can get to your family group that way also.
That's soo funny, I just made a ning site for my family, wish that had come out sooner http://tr.im/hNWG
An interesting use of their Groups feature, now they need to add in notification of Group activity. Currently, Groups are like a black hole that you have to constantly check up on to see what's happening. Then again, maybe that's what they're after...
This is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't help solve the main problem:
Kids don't want their parents & families to see everything they do on FB, but they feel pressured to be friends with their family.
Regardless of having a group where we can post "private" family photos (because that's soooo important :| ), there's still the public stream. Why would anyone even post in private groups (like black holes, as said above) when they can just follow their family publically?
I can definitely see uses for this, but it seems like the opposite thing of what I'd really like to see:
An option to "friend" certain people (like family and co-workers) so that they only see certain parts of your profile, and certain posts. Isn't this logical? I manage my company's FB page now, and even though many co-workers are on FB, I haven't friended them because of this.
Didn't FB used to have a feature where you could accept friends, but only give them access to a limited profile?
It's interesting, but these "family" groups are essentially just the typical group functionality, as other commenters have indicated above. Will grandparents really take to setting up a Facebook profile and account, and manage all the privacy settings, etc? I'd doubt that.
Something much more simple, that has really proved to be a wild success among grandparents (and parents), has been Wee Web (http://www.wee-web.com). Wee Web effectively addresses all the concerns and issues regarding sharing among family members. Facebook would have to change their focus to really succeed at this. Let's face it, it's a "social" network, while LinkedIn is a "professional" network, and a site like Wee Web is a "family" network.
If you are looking for a private place to share events with your family or group, try:
www.airset.com
Don't be put off by all the mumbo-jumbo about "cloud computers". Essentially Airset is a free online group calendar.
My friends seem more worried about their family joining Facebook; specifically, how to keep all of their other content away from their family.
Maybe their should be a secret group for everyone *except* family, or maybe I'm just a too-cool-for-school teenager at heart.
Instead of a private group, they need to jsut go ahead and have it so you can have a friend page and a family page all in one account. I just made it easy and made 2 accounts, one for family and one for friends. but i'd rather not, and hope one doesn't get deleted.
This is exactly why I created famding.com
All the benefits of facebook but completely separate and private. We are also creating family specific apps as well. For now we have 4-way video conferencing.
Jesus Christ, everybody and their grandma here is promoting another site and everybody thinks theirs is better lol I'm care to see any more facebook wantobes.