New Facebook Groups format to replace all existing groups

In an Official blog post from Facebook earlier this week, Facebook announced that all existing groups under the 'old' format (such as Sharing Foals and Calves) will soon be 'upgraded' to the new group format. If you belong to ANY Facebook Groups, you need to read this.

The new group format features several distinct changes from the way the 'old' groups operate.  



What happens when an admin upgrades an old group?

If the admin of an old group decides to upgrade, the group will be converted to the new groups format. If the admin chooses not to upgrade, the group will eventually be archived. Almost everything from the old group will be available in the upgraded group, with a few exceptions.

Things that will be available in the new group include:

• Group photos and Wall posts
• Group discussion threads, which become Wall posts
• The group description, which can be found at the top of the page when you click "See All" members in the new group
• Members of the old group will be migrated to the new group

Things that will NOT be available in the new group include:

• Recent news
• Group officer titles
• The info box under the old group picture
• The group network

If you would like to preserve any of this information, it’s recommended that you save it before your group is upgraded.

Once the group is upgraded, members can:

• Chat with the whole group at once
• Share photo albums
• Poll the group with questions
• Connect off Facebook using a shared group email address
• Create group docs to share information

Members receive notifications about posts in the new group by default. Notification settings can easily be adjusted by clicking the Edit Settings button.

The biggest change you may notice is that posts will no longer appear in strict chronological order.  They will now appear in the order of the last update to the post (via Comments).  This means that a post which may be several minutes old may appear at the top of the group, while a post made moments ago may appear down the wall.  This is how the new groups work, unfortunately.  Keep in mind that the new Facebook Groups are not really intended for large numbers of members, so these groups will not be ideal for FarmVille Link Sharing...but we will make the best of it.

Note that due to their size, groups in the Sharing Foals and Calves Organization may take a substantial amount of time to convert to the new group format.  While we will try to give everyone ample notice when this takes place, we have no idea at this time when Facebook will schedule upgrades for each individual group.