Facebook Introudes New Groups, Download My Information Feature & 3rd Party Application Dashboard

Early this morning, we told you that Facebook is about to introduce major updates for a new Facebook, but not as we thought (the interface). Facebook just added a new features to Facebook and introduced "Groups", so we can say that "Groups" is the new Facebook (that's a fact). Here, we cover the New Groups, all the features & changes in this event with quick videos in action.

New Groups
First thing, you can't just join a group -- another member has to invite you. You can start a new group and a few people (not a lot) to join the group then those people can invite others to join. The group is now closed on the members only. New features include documents, photos and video sharing, also the ability to invite all members of a group to an event. Oh, forgot to say that you can now chat with all group member together using a small chat box (similar to the one with your friends)

Today we’re announcing a completely overhauled, brand new version of Groups. It’s a simple way to stay up to date with small groups of your friends and to share things with only them in a private space. The default setting is Closed, which means only members see what’s going on in a group.

From this space, you can quickly post photos, make plans and keep up with ongoing conversations. You can also group chat with members who are online right now. You can even use each group as an email list to quickly share things when you’re not on Facebook. The net effect is your whole experience is organized around spaces of the people you care most about.

Old Facebook groups still exists and can't be changed to new ones (that's not good). You can only start a whole over new group (there's no way to convert your old group to a new one).

Download My Information
Here's a great feature added to the "New Facebook". Now you can download all your information including photos, messages, posts, notes, comments, friend lists, videos, etc. (not including settings) as a .zip file.

First, we've built an easy way to quickly download to your computer everything you've ever posted on Facebook and all your correspondences with friends: your messages, Wall posts, photos, status updates and profile information.

Application Dashboard
Now, with the new Facebook, you will get all-new application "dashboard" for managing which applications you're connected to and which permissions you have been granted to them. There's also a log of what data has been accessed by each application.

Second, we're launching a new dashboard to give you visibility into how applications use your data to personalize your experience. As you start having more social and personalized experiences across the web, it's important that you can verify exactly how other sites are using your information to make your experience better.

Of course this all-new features are not rolling our for "all" members of Facebook now, but at least some users could get and some are still waiting (including me). We will update the post if we could get our hands on any new features, stay tuned!

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