How to use, abuse, and leave Facebook Groups

Facebook’s new “Groups” feature is slowly making its way out to users, allowing people to set up group chats, document editing, and events for different aspects of their social lives. However, like most new features at Facebook, not everyone knows how to use (or avoid) Groups just yet. So here’s a walkthrough on how to use Facebook Groups to your advantage… and how to get out of them if you decide you’re not such a social person after all.

Creating groups and using them to your advantage

When a Group gets added to your account, Facebook will draw your attention to it with a pop-up over the top of the site. Your groups are listed in the left-hand column, underneath the selectors for new messages and events.

When you create a new group, the site prompts you to give it a name and start typing the names of people you want to add. You also have choices on whether you want the group to be open, closed, or secret—open means that all content and members are public, closed means that the members are public but content is private, and secret means that both members and content are private.

As the person who created the group, you are automatically the admin, but you can name other people as group admins too. Doing so will allow those other members to change permissions on the group, and will also allow you to leave the group later (more on this in a bit).

Once your group is created, anyone who has been invited can begin making posts, chatting, sharing documents, etc. And, if your permissions are set to secret, every post will automatically be limited to only the other members of the group—no one outside the group will be able to see any of the content posted.

As the admin of the group, you can also set up an e-mail address so that your group members can make wall posts via e-mail instead of going to Facebook—this is basically the Facebook equivalent of an e-mail list, where you can send a message to one address and have it go to everyone via wall post.

One of the major benefits that we see in Groups is the ability to quickly set up an event with group members automatically added. When you create an event from the group page, all you have to do is give it a name, time, and location—your group members are automatically invited as guests. As someone who often plans parties and get-togethers via Facebook, sometimes spending hours going through my friend list trying to make sure I get all the right people, this simplicity is a godsend. And, of course, you can add extra people to your event, even if they aren’t in the original group.

But I don’t want to be in your group

There have been a number of criticisms since Facebook’s original announcement about the Groups feature, the most prominent being that anyone can add you to any group, with or without your permission. You would likely find out about this by suddenly getting an influx of e-mail notifications about group activities, or watching the little badge at the top of your Facebook page constantly light up with new updates.

Yes, it’s true that people can add you to any group (just like you can add them to any group), but you aren’t held hostage. Facebook provides a link on the right hand side of a group’s page that says “Leave Group.” When you click it, you’ll get a dialog box asking if you’re sure.

If you ever want to re-join a group that you have left, you just have to request permission from the group’s admins to come back.

A little bit from column A, a little bit from column B

If you don’t want to leave a group, but find that notifications about the group’s activity are a little too frequent for your tastes, there are a few ways to control the flow of information. One is to turn off notifications for that particular group altogether. You can do this by clicking on the “Edit Settings” button on the right-hand side of the group’s page and looking for the e-mail notifications checkbox:

Uncheck it if you want to turn off notifications from this group; if you want to specify that you only get e-mailed about certain types of posts, you can do that too.

Confusingly, Facebook buries further e-mail notification settings in another part of the site (which is at least linked on the above pop-up, so that’s an upside). Clicking on the “edit your notification settings” link brings you to your general account settings, where you have to click on “Groups” to get to more checkboxes.

These settings are more related to joining and leaving groups, or administrating the groups you participate in. If you are in several groups, you can change these settings on a per-group basis. So, if you want to be alerted when people try to join your neighborhood group, but you don’t want to be alerted when someone asks to join your family group, you can do that.

Better than lists

Groups might seem like a hassle for some users—Facebook should add a setting that lets users opt out of all group activity if they so choose, or ask you if you want to join a group before auto-joining you. Still, Groups are indeed a better way to compartmentalize your social connections than Facebook’s old “list” option. The groups make it dead simple to set up document sharing and events with specific people, and you no longer have to worry about accidentally posting wall updates that are viewable to the wrong list.

Now, if only every single person I ever met hadn’t added me to a special group that I have to leave…