Can Facebook Groups recover trust and authenticity on social media?

Conde Nast Traveler recently did something a little unusual in the social media universe – they played hard to get.

Instead of courting new followers with clickbaits and promo codes, the company required that interested people apply to get into their closed Facebook Group, which is focused on female travelers. To be considered for membership, applicants had to explain why the group was important to them, and show an understanding of the community guidelines.

As of this writing, the Women Who Travel Facebook group counts more than 50,000 members. And it boasts a level of activity many brands could only dream of – three-quarters of users are active on a daily basis. The initiative has been so successful that Conde Nast has since extended Facebook Groups across eight of its brands, including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Allure, Brides, Golf Digest, Self, and Teen Vogue.

The Facebook Group is nothing new. Spaces for like-minded people to congregate and discuss specific subjects date in one form or another to the platform’s earliest days.

But for a combination of technical and cultural reasons, groups are suddenly having their moment. Apart from Facebook, LinkedIn revamped its own Groups for its 500+ million users, adding the ability to share photos and videos, as well as receive comment notifications.

In the past year alone, Facebook Group membership is up 40 percent, with 1.4 billion people – more than half of Facebook’s massive user base – now using the feature every month. Of those, 200 million people belong to so-called “meaningful groups,” considered a vital part of users’ daily lives. Mark Zuckerberg said he’d like to see 1 billion users in these groups within five years.

Behind Groups’ hyper-growth

This hockey-stick growth is explained in part by Facebook’s own algorithm shifts and platform tweaks. Even before the Cambridge Analytica crisis reached its crescendo, the platform had recalibrated its algorithms to prioritize engagement with friends, family, and groups, while down-ranking public content shared by businesses, brands, and the media.

Facebook has also tested a dedicated Groups tab inside its mobile app, so users can find all of their groups in one place, as well as discover new ones. Beefed up tools for scheduling posts and screening members have made it easier to build and scale Groups (though critics point out that the kind of robust search tools and “browse-able” archives now commonplace on platforms like Slack are still sorely lacking).

But truly understanding the growth – and future evolution – of Groups requires applying a broader cultural lens. 2018 represented a crisis year for social media – and this was largely a crisis of trust. It’s critical to remember that Facebook and other networks initially represented a sort of safe space: a refuge from the chaos and threats posed by the vast, anonymous internet at large.

Back in the day, most interactions on social media were with real people, many of them friends and family. Believe it or not, Facebook was a place to be yourself and let your guard down.

But that sort of intimacy and collegiality was partly undone by social media’s own success. With time and the addition of several billion users, Facebook’s “walled garden” began to feel more like a Wild West. News feeds overflowed with clickbaits, recipe videos, and spammy posts. Developers scraped off personal data and ads grew increasingly invasive. This came to a head in the 2016 US election cycle and its aftermath, as platforms that once seemed “real” and refreshing became filled with fake news and fake users.

All of this makes the prospect of joining a Facebook Group remarkably appealing. In particular, closed groups, which require admin approval before joining, can seem a throwback to an earlier era of social media. Dialogue is actually productive. Suggestions tend to be useful and actionable. Snark and sarcasm are generally kept to a minimum, as are marketing and sales talk.

In my own backyard, for example, the 6,000-member strong Girl Gang Vancouver Group has earned a reputation as a thriving community for female creatives in media, communications, and tech. Members of the closed group share jobs and resources, and announce events and workshops. Clear posting guidelines preempt spam and robust moderation keeps the feed focused. It feels like Facebook at large, and that’s the point.

The future of Groups

So for companies and brands who rely on social media to reach customers, are Groups the panacea for addressing dipping engagement and declining reach? More broadly, does the Group concept point to a way forward for social media in general – a means to recover the trust and authenticity that made Facebook and other platforms so revolutionary to begin with?

Well, maybe.