Facebook unveils Groups for Schools

newsroom.fb.com

14 points·dutchbrit··10 comments

It's completely off topic, but the .aspx extension on the URL is much more interesting than the announcement itself.

We've been using this at Waterloo for a couple of months now. It's a nice new feature, but one issue is that we already have some huge groups (textbook/housing/class-of groups) from before that cannot be moved into Groups at Waterloo.

Similar here at University of Washington. I am an administrator for the (now unofficial) Class of 2015 group and when they announced this on our campus a few weeks back people were denigrating it for that, among other things.

Facebook has gone full circle.

I know, they should call these school groups "networks".

I'm an undergrad at Emory and we've had this for the past two months.

Aw, this is not newsworthy. This isn't even innovative.

Care to explain why you feel that way? It's a major feature from the dominant social network that could have consequences in the academic space. Personally, I'm curious what effect this could have on Blackboard if they continue to (re-)expand into .edu territory.

These Groups at school was the original purpose of facebook!

Re: Blackboard.

I also think it's quite interesting in this regard, although the largest obstacle is obviously privacy/security. If Facebook were to spin off some of its .edu ventures (encroachments?) with terms more amenable to university and student interests it could do quite well. Being forced to use Blackboard is an inconvenience, but being forced to register for a facebook account feels downright threatening. Not that you're suggesting this, but it has to be crossing a few minds in academia.

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