And, as Facebook's membership has grown at an obscene rate, repetitive and unwanted requests and messages from Groups have done the same. Further complicating the problem is that each invitation and message are treated atomically, as distinct calls to action independent from one another and from the News Feed that require a response from the user. Users are then required to spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning out both their message-inbox and their notification-inbox. This is valuable time that could be better spent completing a survey to determine what typeface or color you are, or ranking your top 5 favorite Matthew Mcconaughey movies.
Salvation may be at hand.
The new Facebook News Feed is the right way to manage these requests, providing data consolidation and the ability for users to filter & control what information they receive. Taken in conjunction with the recent shift of businesses (and orgs & celebrities & causes) to Pages that function like Profiles, even "marketing" communications become manageable. Businesses & organizations are able to promote themselves and users can filter to their hearts content. A secondary positive effect of this filtering is that business & organizations are pressured to publish useful information instead of pure marketing schlock, as people will ignore their updates or, even un-Fan them (gasp!).
What Facebook & Mark Zuckerberg should do is simply do away with Groups altogether. Current Groups would transition into the Pages framework and future Groups would just be new Pages. No functionality would be lost while providing users the ability to participate while controlling the information they receive from businesses, organizations and causes they care about. Businesses will still be able to communicate (in a sane manner) while advertising for their official Facebook presence. Furthermore, modifying the manner in which Pages are able to Message their fans by integrating messaging into the News Feed would be a proactive step to keep Pages from being abused in a manner similar to that of Groups.
The change would likely anger those who rely on Groups to promote their business or pet issue, but it'll make Facebook a far more manageable and enjoyable place to spend time online.
