This post was authored by GraphEffect’s CEO, James Borow.
Last week, Facebook announced the introduction of Groups for Schools, which allows students to connect and share in private groups with their peers about coursework, class discussions or school events. Groups for Schools are a nod to Facebook’s roots, which began as a social network for college students and required their .edu email addresses to join.
Facebook is focusing on localized groups to improve the overall user experience and, most importantly, sense of privacy. Facebook has made this a priority as they realize that getting big means they also have to get small – it’s clear the social network hasn’t lost sight of the importance of an individual’s need to make relevant connections with his or her peers.
Facebook already has “Groups” for non-students available, that allow individuals to communicate via a private news feed. An article from Inside Facebook points out a couple of key differences between the existing Groups feature and the new Groups for Schools:
- Exclusivity: Just like the early days, these groups will only be available to students and require a .edu email address to join
- File Sharing: Unlike the existing Groups on Facebook, users of Groups for Schools will be able to share files with one another, like papers or notes, so long as the documents are not copyrighted.
There will undoubtedly be more features once Facebook rolls this out to universities nationwide. For now the Groups can be separated by major, dorm, classes, and any number of other factors that might be found in the university system.
As Facebook makes this new tool available to more schools it will be interesting to see how it will be incorporated it into the ad offering, The concept of serving ads to audiences in study groups or pre-law groups could be very interesting as it serves as a highly targeted and legitimate filter. That being said, Facebook is most likely not making this move to benefit advertisers, but more as an effort to help college students to learn together as efficiently as they party together.