But for those who haven't heard (or just aren't sure what it's about), here's a brief breakdown:
- You can now create groups of friends centered around a certain topic (for instance, I'm part of the MN PRSA group).
- Members can post comments on the group page that other group members are notified about.
- There's a new group chat feature, where any and all members of a group can chat with each other rather than having to talk to each individual in separate chats.
An early complaint involves those notifications I mentioned in the second point. If you're part of a particularly large or talkative group, you may find yourself bombarded with emails and notifications about new posts and comments. You can limit these notifications or turn them off completely, but you must go into the group and do this manually.
Likewise, membership to the group is now opt-out as well. This means that if someone invites you, you're instantly added and must manually leave the group. And if a friend adds you to one of those large/talkative groups, chances are your inbox will be full of notification emails within minutes.
The one new feature here I do like is the group chat, which is effectively an AOL Instant Messenger-style chat room. I, like many, have had to deal with the frustration of having to chat with several mutual friends about the same topic in separate chats, but this group chat should eliminate this problem.
Regardless of how you feel about them, these changes will have a big impact on how Facebook is used. Naturally, it will take some time before we get a good handle on just how useful it really is, and we will definitely revisit this topic in the near future.