At Facebook's first Communities Summit, admins from top Facebook groups assembled to discuss tools to better manage and optimize their members. Here, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that these changes fuel the company's shifting focus from connecting the world to uniting it.
This was Facebook's first time hosting this two-day event, and it's clear that its emphasis on community is consistent with the platform's changing focus. The company revealed their new mission statement at the Communities Summit, and it's significantly different from its previous one. Formerly, the company's mission statement stated Facebook's focus was "to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected." Now, the new mission statement is "to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together."
To enact this change, Zuckerberg stated that the company is working at a local level. The company plans to equip communities with improved tools to better their interactions and elicit a sense of togetherness.
Facebook emphasized that group admins play a crucial role in executing this new mission, so it's fitting that the new mission statement was revealed in a room filled with hundreds of them. They plan to provide admins with several new tools to optimize the group experience.
Group Insights is a new resource that will allow admins to view the real-time metrics of the group. Data about growth and membership will allow them to better adjust the structure of the group.
It also lets admins view the number of active users, letting them see how many of their members are actually engaged with the group.
Another new tool is Membership Request Filtering. Designed to streamline the acceptance or rejection of members to a group, admin can now sort and filter membership requests based on categories like gender or location.
They can then accept or decline requests on these bases all at once, making this process less tedious.
Trolls are definitely one of the most annoying and frustrating parts of being in a Facebook group. Whether they're posting disrespectful content or spamming the group with irrelevant posts, everyone wants them out — fast. Fortunately, Facebook is now letting group admins remove not only these trolls, but all of their posts and comments, with the click of a button.
Group admins will be pleased with another new tool Facebook's providing them: posts can now be pre-scheduled and thus conveniently uploaded at a set time. Gone are the days of over-loading the group with too much information all at once or having to set reminders to remember when to make a post.
The final tool for admins is still being tested, but it could have some big benefits. Group-to-group linking is a new feature that would allow admins to recommend similar groups to their members.
Intended to bridge communities, this tool embodies Facebook new mission statement.
This isn't the first time Facebook has expressed a desire to contribute to the world more substantively than by just providing your former high school classmates with a place to share pictures of their babies.
Facebook embarked on its Internet.org initiative to connect the entire world to the web. Troubled by the over 4 billion people across the globe who lack internet access, Zuckerberg and the Internet.org team are exploring means of getting the internet to even the most rural regions on the planet.
With all of these ongoing changes, it looks Facebook will be trading wedding photos for philanthropy and annoying political posts for harmony because Zuckerburg's out to make the world a better place.
Just updated your iPhone to iOS 18? You'll find a ton of hot new features for some of your most-used Apple apps. Dive in and see for yourself:
Screenshots by Sarah Tseggay/Gadget Hacks
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