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You are here: Home / Social Marketing / New Facebook Groups – How to Protect Yourself

New Facebook Groups – How to Protect Yourself

October 9, 2010 By Linda Sherman 5 Comments

Facebook made some new announcements this week. As usual, it is important to note what they have done and redo the settings on your personal account. The most noticeable change is the change in Facebook Groups.

There were some positive intentions with this change, however, the current platform allows new activities that most definitely impact your experience on Facebook.

A woman that I am friends with on Facebook created a new Facebook group, with a title suggesting that the members are elite in some way, and added me to the group along with 160+ other people.

This in itself has some issues. Do we all agree with the curation of the members? I founded a group called Women on Top while I was CEO of Club Med in Japan. We let all members participate in the process of vetting members. Complex process but we definitely built a kick-ass group.

So what happens when you get added to a Facebook Group? Every time someone comments on the group, everyone in the group gets an email notification. I am including my email inbox today as an example to show you what happens in default mode.

Much of the commentary on the group on the first day was chatter about archiving all these emails. Perhaps there should be a setting choice for an email digest instead of individual ones? Personally, I don’t need to be notified at all. If I want to see people’s comments I can go to the group. The last thing I need is more stuff in my inbox right now. Yes, I can take these mails directly to a smart inbox folder – but do I need these mails on my computer? That is certainly up to you. If you think they are important and you want to look at them later at your leisure, you should archive them.

Facebook-groups-email-in-box

The screen shot of my personal email inbox has been sanitized to remove the names of the participants following receipt of the complaints you see in comments here. I apologize – I didn’t see anything sensitive in the screenshot. The first 2 – 3 words of comments are completely innocuous. But just FYI – The lack of an opt-in on Facebook Groups also lacks any agreement on the part of members to keep a private group private. Do read the SearchEngineLand article linked to at the end of my post for further shenanigans encouraged by this move on Facebook.

The first time I encountered this type of thing was on Whrrl when they initiated the ability for Members to create “Societies” and add their friends to them at will. After being added to a “Society”, the society began sending notification alerts to my iPhone as though it were one of the few notifications I actually wanted to get – each notification making a ding on my battery. Fortunately, Whrrl swiftly responded by clarifying we turn off that notification.

Same with the new Facebook Groups. I didn’t ask to be added nor to get email notifications, here they are but it looks like they can be turned off. AND you can reject the invitation by removing yourself.

I already have Facebook Chat turned off but apparently you will be buzzed by your Facebook chat.

If you are added to a group, you DO have some choices.
Choice 1: Remove yourself from the Group:
Click on “Leave Group” as in picture below

Leave-group

The head shots of 14 members were removed from this screen shot.

Choice 2: Limit Notifications.
There are several places to do this.
Click on Edit Settings: this is the first screen. The default is “Notify me when a member posts”You can change that.
Change-settings-first-screen

This screen shot was photo-shopped to remove a member’s comment.

Secondly you can choose these notifications – but you should want these.

Email_notifications_for_groups

You’ll see at the bottom of this group “change email settings for individual groups”
By default the group is clicked. You can unclick this:

>Group-email-settings-specific

Meetup.com can sometimes do short spews of correspondence but nothing like what has been created by this group. And I joined MeetUp by my own choice. As things settle down a bit and the ramifications of this move on Facebook become more clear, I will publish an article for my readers at Boomer Tech Talk.

Additions:
Found this great article Mari Smith posted on her Facebook by Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand. Danny does an excellent job making the point that Facebook Groups should be opt-in, not opt-out. Reading it, I felt glad that I’ve been selective in adding Facebook friends – but I still want opt-in.

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Filed Under: Social Marketing Tagged With: facebook, facebook groups, facebook privacy

About Linda Sherman

Boomer Tech Talk Managing Editor, Linda Sherman is passionate about senior health care and healthy longevity. Start-ups and board service in this field are of interest. Linda has a distinguished background of international subsidiary CEO/CMO experience. These include CEO Club Med Japan, Barilla Japan and CMO Wal-Mart Japan. After setting up Coors Japan, Linda devised and implemented an innovative guerrilla-marketing plan for ZIMA in Japan that produced a lasting, profitable success. Linda Sherman has been featured and quoted in Forbes, The New York Times, Christian Monitor and other leading publications. Connect with Linda on Twitter and Instagram @LindaSherman.

Comments

  1. JessicaNorthey says

    October 10, 2010 at 3:55 am

    I agree about the concern for this function on Facebook.What we learned in the past 24 hours is we all use Social Media differently…no surprise there…what one person is comfortable with makes another steamed. I have always admired something Chris Brogan said, "No matter what you do, someone, somewhere, thinks you are doing it wrong." This was true for me in Radio, TV and print. We are only a few years into this process and there are going to be growing some pains.I was completely tickled pink about the connections I made in a group I am in.

    Reply
  2. Linda Sherman Gordon says

    October 10, 2010 at 4:39 am

    Thank you so much Jessica. It was great tweeting with you tonight. I look forward to our continued relationship. Will you be at Blog World? Chris Brogan will definitely be there – available for hugs.

    Reply
  3. Julie Spira says

    October 14, 2010 at 6:58 am

    I appreciate the time and effort you put into writing this post. Every time something changes in the social media world (especially on Facebook) it has an immediate affect that we are not prepared to deal with. Showing the steps you need to take regarding privacy is a benefit. Removing the screen shots referenced above was appropriate. One thing I can say for sure, is the social media community needs to remain social as we stumble upon new changes in the way we communicate with each other.

    Reply
  4. fredmcclimans says

    November 17, 2010 at 7:33 pm

    Linda – Excellent post (I came across it via your comments on Alan’s post! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to help friends navigate through various SM site settings (Facebook being the most notorious).Well done piece.@fredmcclimans

    Reply
  5. Linda Sherman Gordon says

    November 17, 2010 at 7:53 pm

    Thank you Fred! You’ll find other social media tool tips here on my Posterous. My tips here tend to be immediate reaction to help sort out changes as they happen kind of articles. More recently I created (with 2 partners) http://BoomerTechTalk.com to give the type of plain language help it sounds like your friends might appreciate (whatever generation they may be in).

    Reply

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