How do I create a Facebook Group?

I suppose that it's kind of the pot calling the proverbial kettle black for me to write about how to create Facebook Groups after I complained about how they were overrunning my Facebook experience just a day ago, but... I actually like how Facebook has done the groups once I reset the notification settings and quit a few that were just not of interest to me. That's my excuse. You buying it?

Turns out that it's very easy to create groups in Facebook, but there are some aspects of the new interface that are a bit less intuitive now, including the removal of what they presumably determined were redundant and space-wasting buttons like "Submit" after you enter a status update or comment. Takes a bit of getting used to!

In terms of creating a new Facebook Group, just look on the top left of your Facebook pages and you'll see:

As I've highlighted, click on "Create Group..." and you'll see the core elements you'll need to specify:

I decided to create a behind-the-scenes planning group for the Three Insight podcast that my friends Doyle, Michael and I record every week. You are listening, right? If not, click on "Three Insight Podcast" to find us in iTunes!

To do this, I specified the group name, chose a different icon (click on the icon to see a menu full of choices), and then, not knowing what else to do in the "Members" box, started typing in a name. Facebook expanded it, and here's what it looked like as I was typing in Michael's name:

I should note that it's a bit off-putting to have a blank area, but I suspect that it's also to force Facebook Group owners to consciously decide who should be a member, rather than just letting them click on every single person they know, so it's anti-spam in its small way. At least in intention.

The most important question is probably about privacy. Do you want a public group with public archives that even non-members can read? Do you want a group that is publicly visible but the archives are private? The choices are Public, Private and Secret:

There's nothing secret about this group (it'd be daft for me to mark it Secret then write about it here anyway, wouldn't it?) so I marked it "Private" and clicked "Create".

A new group has been born!

One more interesting thing you can do with a Facebook Group: specify an email address for the group. No, really. Like Google Groups, only within Facebook, I guess.

To see how to do that, look up on the right:

Click on "Edit Group" (which only shows up if you're a Group owner) and you'll see some additional things you can tweak and specify:

I did add a small description for the group too, while I was here. A click on "Save Changes" and we're good to go!

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