FACEBOOK HAS BROUGHT the number of apps it’s released to six as it launched another one based on Groups.
The feature, which sees more than 700 million people using it, now has its own dedicated app. It follows the same format as Facebook’s other apps with the most popular groups being located at the top. Users can also create groups directly from the app and… well, that’s it.
However, users will still be able to access Groups in the main Facebook app with the promise that “over time, we’ll continue to make those experiences faster and better.”
The move is part of Facebook’s attempt to carve up its app into smaller, more manageable chunks instead of placing everything within the one app.
The belief is that most users visit an app for a specific reason and don’t want to be bogged down by numerous actions, although it helps increase the amount of time spent on apps overall.
This is one of the reasons why it decided to make messaging a standalone app, and was criticised for its decision to make users download its Messaging app instead of allowing users to access through the main app.
The app is one of many that Facebook has released in recent times. Alongside Messenger, it also has Pages (for admins managing Facebook pages), Slingshot (its competitor to SnapChat), and Rooms which was recently released as a way for users to have anonymised chats, although it faces competition from the likes of Secret, Whisper and Reddit.
And that doesn’t include the specialised apps that have been released and the ones it has scrapped. Back in February, it released Paper in the US, a redesigned version of the News Feed that received much praise but has struggled since its launch while Mentions was designed to help verified users deal with the number of mentions and comments they get.
Although it isn’t exactly an app, the release of Home, Facebook’s attempt to take over your Android phone’s home screen, struggled to take off while the limited success of Camera and Poke resulted in both of them being scrapped.
So far, Facebook’s most successful apps are ones that either comes from its main site (Messages, and most likely Groups) or those it has bought (Intstagram, WhatsApp). For now, it’s focusing on making the former better.
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