Facebook Let’s Users Change Group Names

For the past 5 years administrators of Facebook groups have not been able to change their names. As of today, that restriction is being removed amidst continued feedback from group admins who want the ability to do so. While it’s a seemingly small adjustment, it makes me wonder if we could soon see a mini-market for larger groups. At one point, having a large group was worth a large amount until the company place restrictions on the number of people you could message.

Facebook then reportedly removed that restriction but it’s now somewhat unclear how many people you can message within a group. I’ve reached out to Facebook for clarification and should hear back shortly. Facebook groups are still one of the primary tools for organizing individuals around a specific issue, activity, or general topic and despite its lack of customization features in compares to Facebook Pages, it’s remains to be one of the more effective promotional tools on the site.

I regularly receive inquiries from individuals who are trying to weigh the pros and cons of creating a Facebook group versus a Facebook page. Honestly, there is no clear cut solution. Even this site has fans that are split across a Facebook page and a group and it is a somewhat confusing predicament. As of today though, you can add one more “pro” to the group features: you can change their names, something that is not available on Facebook pages.

We’ll update this post when we hear back from Facebook. Do you prefer using Facebook Pages or Facebook groups currently?

Update
Facebook replied to our inquiry and let us know that the current messaging limit on groups is 5,000 users. Any groups over 5,000 can’t send out messages.

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416126 Comments2009-02-25+15%3A37%3A10Nick+O%27Neill »

I prefer using Facebook pages because:

You could add application on it, which makes features unlimited on your page.

You could target your updates, so say if you want it to target it on teenagers, you could do that!

The pages' photo can be bigger than groups

It's easier for a person to become a fan of a page, rather than joining a group.

Fan pages are unlimited, but you could only join 300 groups

Fan photos and videos are isolated from the photos the page admin adds

Browsing through the Pages is so much easier than browsing through groups

You can delete a Facebook fan page

It tells what the admin has been doing on the page with the mini-feed so you could track what that admin is saying and doing if he's someone important, e.g. footballer.

You could see all the updates that you have missed if you are a new fan

Most importantly, the page manager shows you the demographics of your page, percentages, growth, daily visits etc. and that's really important when you are trying to make an ad campaign because you will know what's your target

Facebook makes free ads for the Pages, on the ads section it will view the page and say something about the page, this only happens if some of your friends become fan of that page

But Groups also have some advantages like

You could invite your friends to the group (i know its annoying when it's a random group, but it gets you going!)

You could have a closed group, accept only the ones you want

You can remove people on the group, something you cant do on the pages

It has the name of the admins on it (i know you can do that on Facebook pages, but some people dont know how to do it)

Group results come before pages if they have the same name

It has recent news (very important), I'm just wondering why facebook doesn't add it to pages when pages need it more

Anyone disagrees with any point I've made, what do you prefer Nick, because you know more about Facebook than us

Thanks

Comment by Oday Nasser — February 25, 2009 @ 2:59 pm
I think they both have different purposes anyway!

Comment by Oday Nasser — February 25, 2009 @ 3:00 pm
Facebook seems to be removing some of my pro-Israel friends from ALL their groups – is anyone else having these issues?

Comment by John — February 25, 2009 @ 5:56 pm
Most facebook groups were never effective anyway, they are used as a label. There are not much to do, there is no flexibility, there are restrictions, it is hard to follow. no new features. NO functionality.

So, a few months ago we released a facebook app which is basically an improved version of facebook groups. It is called Groupsplus ( http://apps.facebook.com/groupsplus ). Check it out. Anyway, we tried to introduce more features like polls, groups feed (to easily follow), calendar, file upload etc. and with next week's relesase customizable templates, group metrics etc. will also be available.

But the issue here is most of the facebook groups are nothing more than a badge. e.g. I Secretly Want To Punch Slow Walking People In The Back Of The Head (I am a member, too). What do people do in that group? Nothing. Just a label. We decided to focus on smaller groups where communication and organization are important; such as yoga groups, church groups, travel groups etc. Of course, we have some users who use Groupsplus like normal groups which is also fine. (We may have made a mistake of naming it Groupsplus. We admit.) We are just hoping to reach maybe 5% of regular groups users who really would use some more features to get things done.

Comment by Alisar — February 25, 2009 @ 7:04 pm
Even better…. something you missed with all this change of “Group Names” is the fact that you can now change group NETWORKS.

So all those groups that were originally created in a college or regional network back in the day can now be opened to Global.

Pretty nifty. About time.

Comment by noah — February 25, 2009 @ 7:04 pm
Pages and Groups served different purpose.

It's good news to hear this features.

Btw, is there any way to transfer Facebook Pages ownership to other person?

Let say, I develop Pages for company, can I later transfer the ownership to them?

Comment by Facebook User — February 26, 2009 @ 7:09 am
Allowing admins to add applications to Groups would give them some big advantages over Pages for certain applications. Any thoughts or rumors on this happening?

Comment by Daryl Hatton — February 26, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
They added this feature about a week ago.

Comment by James Clark Embree — February 26, 2009 @ 7:44 pm
One of the reasons we began building Facebook apps in the first place was that we couldn't rename a group. We had an event group that was year-specific and we didn’t want to have to start over each year that the event happened. Being able to change the group name would have been ideal, allowing us to retain our fanbase rather than starting from scratch each year. Yet wasn’t one of the reasons Facebook was against group renaming was that it could lead to abuse: you joined the group “Canadian Cooking” and then it was renamed to “Canadian XXX Cooking”?

http://so.ca/?p=104

Comment by Omri Tintpulver — February 27, 2009 @ 3:14 am
Right now my clients prefer fan pages. They like how everything can be customized for them.

The one thing I would love on pages is that updates would go into the fans inbox and NOT in the updates on the side.. does anyone check these? Updates and inbox should be combined.

Dana King

fan pages:

Miller Electric Welders

Envano

Alexis Sauter

Hobart Welding

Green Bay Boy Choir and Girl Choir

plus – coming soon – Ariens (snow and lawn care)

Comment by Dana King — February 27, 2009 @ 6:24 am
After I make updates to my group page, how do I stop Facebook from sending an email to all the members of my group? I would prefer not to send annoying emails to others everytime I make an update. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Comment by William Pepe — March 14, 2009 @ 10:47 am
Can you no longer change the name of your facebook group?

Comment by David Greer — April 12, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
I have a fan group page on FACEBOOK that is called “I AM A HARRICANIAC” but it has been spelt wrong as it is supposed to say “I AM A HURRICANIAC” could this please be changed for me or could you please tell me how i could change it?

Comment by Ricky James Burnitt — October 8, 2009 @ 10:36 am
RE FACEBOOK GROUPS: how does one change a profile picture on a Groups Page? Can it be done?

Comment by marianne — October 21, 2009 @ 10:35 am
can pages send messages to the fans? and if so is possible to send messages to pages with more than 5000 users?

Comment by maria — October 23, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
Hi, would like to find out is there any way to turn facebook group to a facebook page?

Comment by meiwan — November 4, 2009 @ 4:33 am
i just created a group…sad to say i mispelled it..how can i edit the name of the group?

Comment by noel — November 15, 2009 @ 7:39 am
Is it possible to change the groupo name i have mad from AA FOR FACEBOOK JUNKIES …. tO,,,, FA FOR FACEBOOK JUNKIES….. hOW DO I GO ABOUT DOING SO

Comment by SEAN BREECE — January 8, 2010 @ 8:51 am
I created a 'group' page but somehow it turned into a 'person' page. How can I change that back to a 'group' page so people can become fans and share what I have already posted on this page?

Comment by Krista — January 14, 2010 @ 3:05 pm
I would really like to be able to change from a group to a page. My group has 430 members but I'm sure if it was a page I would have much more. FB limits people to how many groups that they can join but not be a fan of. Why? I now feel it's to late to start over. BTW the group is SuperHero Seminar please check it out.

Comment by jack — March 15, 2010 @ 1:39 pm
Wished they would also let us change our facebook page names. Originally I spent lots of money on facebook advertising to get people to my page, now I can't even change the name to my new business name.

Comment by Alan Woo — March 21, 2010 @ 7:49 pm
I agree with Jack, March 15th. I want to change froma group to a page. How can I do it without losing my members? FB please respond.

Comment by Joe — March 29, 2010 @ 1:04 pm
we're in 2010 and facebook haven't been out for 5 years and you posted that in feb 2009 and saying for the past 5 years, it clearly a big lie

Comment by cedeeee — May 13, 2010 @ 9:17 am
I do believe that we should be able to change or add to our Fan page names instead of having to go in and delete everything to start all over. It would make it easier for the business.

Just my 2 cents

Sonya

Comment by sonya schroeder — June 9, 2010 @ 11:35 am
facebook group more useful

Comment by channak — July 30, 2011 @ 1:03 pm
I am an admin of the group named 'Green University of Bangladesh' and the link is http://www.facebook.com/groups/gub.... . I created a group e-mail address (gub.rockzz@groups.facebook.com) . Now I want to change the group name as 'Green University Student Association' . I tried a lot. But I could not change the name. If someone can give me the solution I will be so grateful to him/her.

Comment by Nuruzzaman Mahdi — January 16, 2012 @ 3:27 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

I prefer using Facebook pages because:

You could add application on it, which makes features unlimited on your page.

You could target your updates, so say if you want it to target it on teenagers, you could do that!

The pages' photo can be bigger than groups

It's easier for a person to become a fan of a page, rather than joining a group.

Fan pages are unlimited, but you could only join 300 groups

Fan photos and videos are isolated from the photos the page admin adds

Browsing through the Pages is so much easier than browsing through groups

You can delete a Facebook fan page

It tells what the admin has been doing on the page with the mini-feed so you could track what that admin is saying and doing if he's someone important, e.g. footballer.

You could see all the updates that you have missed if you are a new fan

Most importantly, the page manager shows you the demographics of your page, percentages, growth, daily visits etc. and that's really important when you are trying to make an ad campaign because you will know what's your target

Facebook makes free ads for the Pages, on the ads section it will view the page and say something about the page, this only happens if some of your friends become fan of that page

But Groups also have some advantages like

You could invite your friends to the group (i know its annoying when it's a random group, but it gets you going!)

You could have a closed group, accept only the ones you want

You can remove people on the group, something you cant do on the pages

It has the name of the admins on it (i know you can do that on Facebook pages, but some people dont know how to do it)

Group results come before pages if they have the same name

It has recent news (very important), I'm just wondering why facebook doesn't add it to pages when pages need it more

Anyone disagrees with any point I've made, what do you prefer Nick, because you know more about Facebook than us

Thanks

Comment by Oday Nasser — February 25, 2009 @ 2:59 pm

I think they both have different purposes anyway!

Comment by Oday Nasser — February 25, 2009 @ 3:00 pm

Facebook seems to be removing some of my pro-Israel friends from ALL their groups – is anyone else having these issues?

Comment by John — February 25, 2009 @ 5:56 pm

Most facebook groups were never effective anyway, they are used as a label. There are not much to do, there is no flexibility, there are restrictions, it is hard to follow. no new features. NO functionality.

So, a few months ago we released a facebook app which is basically an improved version of facebook groups. It is called Groupsplus ( http://apps.facebook.com/groupsplus ). Check it out. Anyway, we tried to introduce more features like polls, groups feed (to easily follow), calendar, file upload etc. and with next week's relesase customizable templates, group metrics etc. will also be available.

But the issue here is most of the facebook groups are nothing more than a badge. e.g. I Secretly Want To Punch Slow Walking People In The Back Of The Head (I am a member, too). What do people do in that group? Nothing. Just a label. We decided to focus on smaller groups where communication and organization are important; such as yoga groups, church groups, travel groups etc. Of course, we have some users who use Groupsplus like normal groups which is also fine. (We may have made a mistake of naming it Groupsplus. We admit.) We are just hoping to reach maybe 5% of regular groups users who really would use some more features to get things done.

Comment by Alisar — February 25, 2009 @ 7:04 pm

Even better…. something you missed with all this change of “Group Names” is the fact that you can now change group NETWORKS.

So all those groups that were originally created in a college or regional network back in the day can now be opened to Global.

Pretty nifty. About time.

Comment by noah — February 25, 2009 @ 7:04 pm

Pages and Groups served different purpose.

It's good news to hear this features.

Btw, is there any way to transfer Facebook Pages ownership to other person?

Let say, I develop Pages for company, can I later transfer the ownership to them?

Comment by Facebook User — February 26, 2009 @ 7:09 am

Allowing admins to add applications to Groups would give them some big advantages over Pages for certain applications. Any thoughts or rumors on this happening?

Comment by Daryl Hatton — February 26, 2009 @ 1:49 pm

They added this feature about a week ago.

Comment by James Clark Embree — February 26, 2009 @ 7:44 pm

One of the reasons we began building Facebook apps in the first place was that we couldn't rename a group. We had an event group that was year-specific and we didn’t want to have to start over each year that the event happened. Being able to change the group name would have been ideal, allowing us to retain our fanbase rather than starting from scratch each year. Yet wasn’t one of the reasons Facebook was against group renaming was that it could lead to abuse: you joined the group “Canadian Cooking” and then it was renamed to “Canadian XXX Cooking”?

http://so.ca/?p=104

Comment by Omri Tintpulver — February 27, 2009 @ 3:14 am

Right now my clients prefer fan pages. They like how everything can be customized for them.

The one thing I would love on pages is that updates would go into the fans inbox and NOT in the updates on the side.. does anyone check these? Updates and inbox should be combined.

Dana King

fan pages:

Miller Electric Welders

Envano

Alexis Sauter

Hobart Welding

Green Bay Boy Choir and Girl Choir

plus – coming soon – Ariens (snow and lawn care)

Comment by Dana King — February 27, 2009 @ 6:24 am

After I make updates to my group page, how do I stop Facebook from sending an email to all the members of my group? I would prefer not to send annoying emails to others everytime I make an update. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Comment by William Pepe — March 14, 2009 @ 10:47 am

Can you no longer change the name of your facebook group?

Comment by David Greer — April 12, 2009 @ 1:33 pm

I have a fan group page on FACEBOOK that is called “I AM A HARRICANIAC” but it has been spelt wrong as it is supposed to say “I AM A HURRICANIAC” could this please be changed for me or could you please tell me how i could change it?

Comment by Ricky James Burnitt — October 8, 2009 @ 10:36 am

RE FACEBOOK GROUPS: how does one change a profile picture on a Groups Page? Can it be done?

Comment by marianne — October 21, 2009 @ 10:35 am

can pages send messages to the fans? and if so is possible to send messages to pages with more than 5000 users?

Comment by maria — October 23, 2009 @ 5:02 pm

Hi, would like to find out is there any way to turn facebook group to a facebook page?

Comment by meiwan — November 4, 2009 @ 4:33 am

i just created a group…sad to say i mispelled it..how can i edit the name of the group?

Comment by noel — November 15, 2009 @ 7:39 am

Is it possible to change the groupo name i have mad from AA FOR FACEBOOK JUNKIES …. tO,,,, FA FOR FACEBOOK JUNKIES….. hOW DO I GO ABOUT DOING SO

Comment by SEAN BREECE — January 8, 2010 @ 8:51 am

I created a 'group' page but somehow it turned into a 'person' page. How can I change that back to a 'group' page so people can become fans and share what I have already posted on this page?

Comment by Krista — January 14, 2010 @ 3:05 pm

I would really like to be able to change from a group to a page. My group has 430 members but I'm sure if it was a page I would have much more. FB limits people to how many groups that they can join but not be a fan of. Why? I now feel it's to late to start over. BTW the group is SuperHero Seminar please check it out.

Comment by jack — March 15, 2010 @ 1:39 pm

Wished they would also let us change our facebook page names. Originally I spent lots of money on facebook advertising to get people to my page, now I can't even change the name to my new business name.

Comment by Alan Woo — March 21, 2010 @ 7:49 pm

I agree with Jack, March 15th. I want to change froma group to a page. How can I do it without losing my members? FB please respond.

Comment by Joe — March 29, 2010 @ 1:04 pm

we're in 2010 and facebook haven't been out for 5 years and you posted that in feb 2009 and saying for the past 5 years, it clearly a big lie

Comment by cedeeee — May 13, 2010 @ 9:17 am

I do believe that we should be able to change or add to our Fan page names instead of having to go in and delete everything to start all over. It would make it easier for the business.

Just my 2 cents

Sonya

Comment by sonya schroeder — June 9, 2010 @ 11:35 am

facebook group more useful

Comment by channak — July 30, 2011 @ 1:03 pm

I am an admin of the group named 'Green University of Bangladesh' and the link is http://www.facebook.com/groups/gub.... . I created a group e-mail address (gub.rockzz@groups.facebook.com) . Now I want to change the group name as 'Green University Student Association' . I tried a lot. But I could not change the name. If someone can give me the solution I will be so grateful to him/her.

Comment by Nuruzzaman Mahdi — January 16, 2012 @ 3:27 am

Facebook Let’s Users Change Group Names

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Social Media Jobs

Let your next job find you!

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Jobs of the Day

Digital Strategist

Digital/Social Media Manager - Entertainment

Social Media Coordinator

See all jobs

Upcoming Events

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