Ever been the administrator of a Facebook Group discussion? The company wants you to know that it values you for having contributed positively to its mission of building communities.
At its first ever Communities Summit, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stopped by Chicago's West Loop on Thursday to address a gathering of Group administrators, who the company identified as “real community leaders” in a blog post. Kicking off the invitation-only 3-day summit, Zuckerberg outlined Facebook’s new mission: Moving beyond connecting people to "bringing the world closer together."
The company pointed out that more than 1 billion people around the world use Groups, and more than 100 million people are members of what Facebook defines as “meaningful groups” — communities that become the most important part of someone's experience on Facebook. Announcing it would like the latter number to also touch one billion, the company, in response to user surveys, rolled out a slew of new technology tools at the summit to help Groups build community more strategically.
These include “Group Insights,” real-time metrics around growth, engagement and membership, smarter ways to sort and filter membership requests, and one-step solutions to remove “bad actors” — group members harming communities, along with the ability to delete any content they have created. Other tools introduced include the ability for group moderators to schedule posts, and “group-to-group linking” or introductions between similar Groups, with the hope of bringing sub-communities closer together.
While Zuckerberg didn’t identify the specific motivations behind putting together a gathering dedicated to Groups, he emphasized the value proposition of the platform in enabling people to "meet new people with new perspectives." Earlier this year in February, he had outlined his manifesto for what he envisioned Facebook's humanitarian impact could be over the next few years.
Facebook has come under increased scrutiny since the results of the last U.S. presidential election were announced, with pundits crediting it to being everything from a "fake news" platform to having served as a socio-political "echo chamber" — reinforcing people's existing beliefs with a flawed news feed algorithm. This is inspiring innovation at all levels — including from students like these at the University of Illinois — to build better technology tools and combat online threats to a well-functioning democracy.
"We need to give people a voice to get a diversity of opinions out there, but we also need to build enough common ground so we can all make progress together," Zuckerberg said at the summit.
Some of the top public comments in response to Zuckerberg’s personal Facebook post announcing the news were largely positive, calling him a “Chief Enablement Officer” and crediting Facebook for bringing together long-lost classmates and estranged family members.
Zuckerberg also weighed in on what a mission statement should mean for a company. “A mission isn't just a statement. It's a nuanced philosophy and hope for the world. We carry out our mission not through repeating a statement, but in the work each of us do every day. And if enough of us work to build community and bring people together, then we just might change the world,” he concluded.
Image via Facebook
