Facebook ‘Groups’ could boost privacy, collaboration

“I think Facebook can be used very effectively by schools in general outreach. I know many districts are now also setting up pages on Facebook. This gives them a way to communicate with parents and students,” said Willard. “It also appears to me that school athletic teams and other extracurricular organizations can use Facebook, and with this feature do so in a way that keeps the membership and communications in a defined group.”

Some of the online communication and collaboration tools in Facebook Groups are found in a variety of other sites, such as Google Docs or Gaggle. Some critics of Facebook Groups say it doesn’t allow users to accept or deny group memberships. Users therefore must manually “leave” a group they are in if they don’t want to receive the group’s messages or have it listed on their profile.