Facebook groups can now launch discussion forums for up to 250 people – TechCrunch

If you miss the old AOL chat rooms, you'll love plan to combine groups and Messenger without spraying you to death. As of today, Facebook will gradually offer members of Facebook groups the opportunity to initiate group discussions on specific subtopics that can participate up to 250 members. They can also start audio or video calls with up to 50 members. A group of dog owners could create topics to discuss spontaneous encounters in the parks, grooming tips, or photo-sharing during the growth of their puppies. Chat for groups could make Facebook's newsgroups more real-time and more engaging, enhancing loyalty to one of the most differentiated features of the social network.

But instead of alerting you immediately to each message in each thread, you will first receive a Facebook group notification inviting you to each new group discussion that you voluntarily join to receive additional notifications. If you miss this initial alert, you can still access the new Facebook Groups Chat tab to browse active chats or start a new one. And if a group discussion becomes overwhelming, you can turn off messaging and Messenger game notifications, or choose to receive notification only if you're @ mentioned in the thread. As a last resort against spam, group administrators can always close a group chat or limit their creation to other administrators.

Facebook has been interested for a while in the integration of Messenger and groups. He already offers a group discussion to 250 members of a Facebook event. In 2016, Messenger tested the public discussion "Chambers". Facebook has now decided to create a discussion as an extension of its existing groups.

While news feeds become more politically combative and the algorithm favors general-interest content that appeals to everyone, there is less room for content with niche interests on Facebook. This has contributed to an explosion of group discussions with competitors like Telegram. WhatsApp has reorganized its own group discussions with more administration tools in May to combat this threat.

With 1.4 billion people active in Facebook groups each month within tens of millions of active groups, this feature generates a ton of activity and visits to Facebook. With group discussions, Facebook expects users to "plan events, hold face-to-face meetings or conduct more in-depth discussions." The messaging could also help Facebook achieve its goal of integrating a billion people in what it calls "significant groups" after the announcement of 200 million people were already in May. With all the scandals that are eating away at its reputation and fearing to polarize the population, Facebook wants to find more ways to show that it actually brings people together.