Your 1980s church-choir reunion is out. Your group of friends with an offbeat sense of humor is in. Facebook on Wednesday unveiled a redesign of the way people connect on the massive social network, with groups now defined by how and when you choose to interact with other users instead of common interests or experiences.
‘Feels Really Good’
Although users could already choose who sees their updates and photos by creating lists to separate contacts, such as work connections and family members, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said only about five percent of users bother to edit lists.
The new system, which took effect Wednesday, will allow users to quickly add friends to a group by tagging them as they do photos. Those friends can then invite others to join. They can also chat in groups instead of one-on-one.
“Friend lists felt like work,” said Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s director of engineering. “Groups is fun! Groups feels really good.”
Past interest groups won’t be dismantled, but new ones won’t be created, said Zuckerberg at the company’s Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters. The event was carried live on Facebook’s official streaming channel.
Zuckerberg also unveiled a new dashboard for applications and a way for users to download all their data from Facebook’s servers.
“You own your information, you should have control,” said the grey-t-shirt-clad Zuckerberg, speaking in a lunchroom-like setting surrounded by giant screens and joined by top developer staffers. “You put all that effort into uploading, you should be able to get it and do whatever you want with it.”
He said that while users could conceivably take their Facebook data, including wall posts, favorites and photos and upload them to another social-media site, it would be easier to use Facebook Connect, which allows users to log into other sites with their Facebook ID and then share information from that…