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Facebook Group Limits, Do You Agree?

Posted by Nick O'Neill on September 7th, 2007 10:37 AM

As you probably already know, Facebook has some limits set on groups within Facebook. Baratunde Thurston has covered the issues that he ran into. The last company that I was working at used Facebook groups as a way to keep in touch with their members that had profiles on Facebook. This is a great tool for generating leads as well as organizing events, but if you try to surpass 1000 (or 550 in Baratunde’s case), you are going to run up against a wall.

Suddenly you are blocked from messaging your group. Doesn’t this make the group practically useless at this point? One purpose of the group is a sign of affiliation. The other purpose is to message those that have opted-in to receive messages. The main reason for the shut down of Facebook messaging was the Brody Ruckus incident that took place late last year.

Since then, Facebook has remained one of the best sites for maintaining connections with others but it has not been useful for generating groups. I have a feeling that this problem will be resolved when Facebook opens up their API to include groups. At that point someone will develop the “Opt-in Groups” application that enables users to enter their email address and receive messages from admins. Is this really the best option though? Do you think Facebook should ban messaging for groups with over 1000 users?

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 10:37 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 5 Comments

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    I agree that this is a huge limitation (especially for groups like Students for Sensible Drug Policy who are trying to maintain contact with thousands of students on campuses across the country).

    I think the solution is for FB to automatically include a footer with links in each message sent out through groups that allow folks to easily 1) remove themselves from the group or 2) stay in the group but unsubscribe from message notifications. This is how many orgs operate with e-mail blasts. Why can't FB implement a similarly simpe system with their messaging system?
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    Ban groups over 1000? Seriously? Baratunde mentioned "apple students" has over 400,000 members in its group. Totally a pay to play move that may give some insight to, dare I say, a seedy underbelly of Facebook. Pretty effed up from a company thats building itself on openness. With millions and millions of users, doesn't 1000 users in a group seem a bit short sited?
    The whole point is you JOIN a group. You see how many users are in the group. You can LEAVE the group if you don't like it or their messaging practices. Plain and simple.
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    I totally agree...I am getting involved with the web strategy of a presidential campaign (to remain nameless as of now)...and we have a rather large facebook group and we are looking to create a college-focused website to build a brand off of the facebook group. However, most people are not active on their groups so when we launch the site, we expect a slow trickle of movement to the site, rather than the mass expansion we could get if we were allowed to send a message informing people of the new site.

    It is certainly undermining the use of a group as a valid tool for 'group' based communications.
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    I can 100% identify with Baratunde. The limit is absurd.
    I know of at least 2 non-profits havinging their profiles entirely deleted. Not only is 100s hour of work, data, and relationships are down the digital drain.

    I worked from an arts organization in DC and had my identity and data killed. No warning. No you have 24 hours to rectify this. Or this is a warning. Gone. Deleted period. Its like having your blog erased or your thesis entirely wiped out.

    Beth Kanter also details the same problem here with the National Wildlife Foundation. http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/09/more...
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    As I've written the past, I'm completely unhappy with Facebook Groups. I think they should be re-done completely. There should be some way to view what's going on in your groups in your news feed. This way groups become more hubs of activity and not badges of interest or ways to blast messages.

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