Oh Where, Oh Where… Have My New Group Members Gone?
Recently, Facebook brought timeline covers to groups which did good things for improving branding.
One subtle change that I didn’t catch at first was a small (but important) change to the way notifications of new members in the group are handled.
Originally, once a new member was added (and approved), a notification automatically appeared on the group wall for all members to see:
This was handy in small groups or established older groups but in rapidly growing groups it may have posed an issue of stream clutter.
Now, no automatic line entry is added to the wall/stream but the notification of recent count displays in the left hand sidebar:
This popup makes it easy to see who has been added in the last week and to start a discussion with them (which will THEN display on the group wall/stream).
The downside here is that it is very possible to overlook checking this and quickly add someone and forget to start the discussion. Now, unless your co-leads in the group happen to catch it, there is no extraneous wall entry for the community to see.
Also, people added more than a week ago are not accessible from this popup (and clicking “See All” takes you to your full member listing with no little comment boxes).
I’m not particularly sure this is an improvement although it DOES make it easy to quickly ensure you haven’t missed saying hi to any new people in the last week!
What do you think about this new change?
Be sure you drop in on groups you’re a member of (particularly if you’re part of one of mine!) and say hi to the new members!
PS: Thanks to Jami Howard for originally bringing this to my attention.