How can I find cool new groups in Facebook?

Ah Facebook. That social network that sucks all the time out of our days and has over a billion active daily users. To be specific, they estimate that they have 1.37 billion daily active users on average for the month of September 2017, adding up to a mind-boggling 2.07 billion monthly active users. Time spent per day is a bit harder to pin down, but estimates vary between 20-40 minutes/daily. That’s a crazy lotta usage, so I totally understand your design to find some fun groups to get involved with.

Not only that, but with 2 billion active users, it’s no surprise that Facebook also represents the best and worst of humanity, the noble people who have thoughtful comments and are supportive of others and the cranks and trolls who are endlessly critical and judgmental. Yet another reason to change your daily experience on Facebook by changing who you track and what groups you’re in to find some level of kindness. I do encourage you to have a mix of viewpoints, however, because while an echo-chamber of people who all have exactly your views makes it easy, it never challenges you to think about things differently either.

Anyway, let’s look at a couple of the different ways you can explore groups on Facebook.

One way is to simply search for a keyword or phrase. For example, mazda offers up pages, posts, and much more:

Look along the top, however: that’s the Facebook categorization of results. To narrow results down to just groups, click on Groups and you’ll see just groups related to the specific topic or theme:

What’s most useful is to see the post/day rating: If you’re looking for a busy active group, then 10 or more posts daily is great. If you want a group that lets you find like minded people, but without overwhelming you, check out some with lower frequency and/or perhaps less members. Still, think about the fact that there are 37K members of the Subaru Impreza GC6 Club and 23K members of the Mazda 6 Club. That’s crazy!

There’s another, less obvious way to search for groups on Facebook, however, and that’s to rely on the Facebook AI itself. Facebook already knows your interests and social circles based on your profile information, so it can utilize that information to suggest groups!

To start, go to the menu off your profile pic in the top right of any Facebook page:

You want to choose the highlighted option: “New Groups“. As you can see, it has 7 suggestions for me ready to go!

Facebook drops you right onto the Discover page, which for me is a combination of groups FB recommends for me and groups my friends are already involved with:

See that Instant Pot club with over a million members? Yeah, that’s going to be chaos, so I’ll avoid that. Then again, I don’t have an actual Instant Pot anyway, so that’s an easy decision. On the left side, there are some interesting suggestions too, including two competing D&D groups. Weird.

This gets more interesting yet if you click on “Groups” because if you’re like me, you’ll find that you’ve actually been invited to join some groups and forgot to respond:

Not sure about what some of these groups are about? Don’t just join ’em, move your cursor over the group name to find out more about it:

There ya go. A couple of different ways to learn more about Facebook group options and which might be a great addition to your daily updates!

Pro Tip: While you’re here, check out our extensive Facebook help and why not Follow AskDaveTaylor on Facebook too?