The Facebook and WhatsApp app icons are displayed on an iPhone (Photo : Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
Facebook will roll out the new "Discover" feature on the social network to help people find more groups that they might be interested in joining.
Groups could be one of the most used but underutilized features on Facebook. Most users just create groups for short-term projects while others create much larger groups for varying interests.
Some groups can't really be seen by other users even if they are set to public. They need to know the exact name of the group in order for them to be able to join.
This makes it hard for users looking for groups that share their interests. They could meet new friends through the members and they can start conversations on posts and polls.
Now, Facebook is planning to launch the new Discover feature once it is fully tested by a random subset of the users. The social network giant told Mashable that they will roll out the feature for the public soon after they make sure that it is ready.
Discover will allow users to choose from 25 different categories, including travel, sports, food, parenting and networking. They won't have to know the name of the group in order for it to pop out in the discovery results.
Users will also be able to see groups which their friends are part of, but the suggested groups feature already does this at random. Discover will put more relevant results for the users.
Facebook will also list down the top groups in each category. However, it is now known yet which factors or characteristics will be taken into consideration in order for the feature to list it under the top groups.
The factors may include how many the members are o how frequent the interactions are. Private groups, on the other hand, would most likely be hidden from Discover's results.
Facebook groups already has over one billion users, Bloomberg has learned. The new feature has the potential to increase that figure as it makes the process of searching and joining groups easier than before.
The social network giant has already made it easier to post files in groups. Users can even invite new members to the group through their emails.
Facebook did not announce when the Discover feature will be rolled out globally. So far, the testing seems to be going smoothly.
