Facebook has groups. You might not have known that beyond the few cursory groups your friends have invited you to, but you can also find groups related to your various interests to partake in large, group conversations (and content sharing) themed to a particular topic.
In an effort to encourage more people to go out and find groups to participate in, Facebook is testing a new "Discover" feature for a random subset of its users. If you're one of the lucky ones selected to participate, you'll see the new option within Facebook's Groups section. (Tap on the More tab, then tap on "Groups," to see if you have it.)
In the Discover tab, you'll be able to pick from 25 different categories with different themes: Professional Networking; Animals & Pets; Buy, Sell, Trade; and Funny (to name a few). Tap on any of them, and Facebook will give you some suggestions of themed groups you might want to look into joining. These could be groups that other friends of yours have joined, local groups, group with a ton of members, or whatever other combination of characteristics Facebook uses to highlight some of these top groups.
The main Discover tab also showcases groups that a number of your friends have joined (regardless of what the group actually is). And if you don't feel like tapping through specific categories to see what's available, Facebook also lists some of the top groups in each category on this tab. Just scroll up and down to see everything that's available.
Facebook told Mashable that the company plans to roll out the Discover feature to more users soon, so don't fret if you don't have access to it just yet. It's also a little clunky in its design, but we don't know if Facebook has any plans to refine the feature beyond what it's currently testing.
According to Facebook, the company had one billion users participating in groups as of January. Though, even then, executives noted that the company could do a better job promoting the feature to its users—hence the new Discover bit.
"As widely used as Groups is, if you think about it through the view of any individual person, I think people have tons of groups in their lives that they don't actually use. If you think of every team you're involved in -- groups of people at work, social clubs you have -- my bet is that for 9 out of 10 of them you don't have a Facebook group," said Will Cathcart, Facebook vice president of product, in an interview with Bloomberg.
Source: Facebook Tests New 'Discover' Feature For Groups
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