Facebook continues its unbundling strategy to highlight its important features separately. In a latest effort, the social network launched a standalone mobile app for Facebook Groups. The popular category on Facebook's main app and web is used by hundreds and millions of users and the company hopes to replicate a similar seamless user experience.
Facebook Groups is already a success and an integral part of the site. According to the company, more than 700 million people use Groups to connect with other users with similar interests such as religion, health, excursions and more. Facebook's decision to launch a separate app just for Groups is a part of the company's ongoing unbundling efforts.
"We are introducing the app that helps people share faster and more easily with all the groups in their life. We built this app with the people who use groups the most in mind," Shirley Sun, Product Manager of Facebook, said in an official blog post, Tuesday.
The Facebook Groups app carries out the same functions as its web counterpart – sharing, chatting and keeping up with your groups on the go. The standalone app allows users to create new groups, manage memberships, toggle between groups, join new groups and view all notifications, all within the app. In order to allow access to the most used groups easy, the app places them at the top.
Additionally, Facebook Groups also suggests new groups based on users' interest like the Pages liked on the site, geographic area and the groups your friends have joined. Users can also use the Discover tab to find new groups, same as on the the desktop.
For quick access to your favorite groups, users can add the Facebook Groups icon to the home screen. This makes it easier to connect with family or close friends groups.
Facebook has long been experimenting in different ways to attract users. The company launched new apps like Paper, Slingshot, Rooms, Mentions and others to cover a wide area of communication. Messenger is a huge hit for Facebook with over 500 million users, but it is attributed to the company's decision to mandate the use of app on mobile for chats. Luckily, for Facebook Groups, users are free to use the standalone app or the feature within the main app or web. But it remains to be seen how long the company keeps this option open for the users.
Facebook Groups is available for download on iOS and Android platforms for free.
