Facebook hits 2 Billion People as Facebook Groups gains in Importance

by Startacus Admin

Last week Facebook hosted their first-ever Facebook Communities Summit in Chicago with hundreds of invited group admins, where they announced new features and tools to support communities / groups on Facebook.

This article on Facebook Newsroom summarized:

“Mark Zuckerberg kicked off by celebrating the role Groups play in the Facebook community and thanking the group admins who lead them. He also announced a new mission for Facebook that will guide our work over the next decade: Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”

Going on to say:

An important part of delivering on our new mission is supporting group admins, who are real community leaders on Facebook. We’re adding several new features to help them grow and manage their groups”

Fast forward to yesterday (Tues 27th June) and Mark Zuckerberg announced that the facebook community had reached 2 billion people. He went on to say “We're making progress connecting the world, and now let's bring the world closer together.”



Spot the similarities...

So, the mission is clear - bringing those 2 billion people closer together.

With extra power comes responsibility - and it appears that Facebook have understandably recognised that although facebook has grown to 2 billion users, those users, (admittedly even your own friends and families) have often become more distant and polarised the more ‘online’ has taken over and Facebook has grown. 

Facebook Groups can be a good way of bringing people together - so if facebook groups, communities, and community admin’s can be encouraged and perhaps even be rewarded, we can totally understand why MZ and the Facebook management team sees this as their next natural step, and in keeping with their next big mission to bring people closer together.

Of course, if they don’t build communities that add real value, someone else will do it instead, so it’s also a wise move to aim to make Facebook Groups a haven for building relationships, not spam, trolling and division.

Quick startup focused thought here...

As Startacus is an community for startups, entrepreneurs and self-starters - we should add that if you work for a startup or developing business, now is perhaps a good time to create and grow a Facebook group that represents your target customer / demographic. That's if Facebook is your thing of course. 

After all - online engagement can be fundamental in driving business and customer loyalty and if Facebook is going to add more value to their Facebook groups then now could be a good time to set up a relevant facebook group - just don’t make it advertorial, there’s nothing worse.


If you liked this article, you might also want to read our recent article on What the UK & Ireland edition of Mashable on Snapchat Discover might mean for digital content & startups and the previous article on how startups can generate business through Facebook.

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• #facebook
• #2 billion people
• #facebook groups
• #online engagement
• #customer loyalty
• #mark zuckerberg

Published on: 28th June 2017