On November 4, Facebook will be holding its 2021 Communities Summit. The virtual event brings together moderators from various groups to facilitate the exchange of tips, insights, and news about current and upcoming plans and updates for the platform.

Facebook explains:

“The Facebook Communities Summit is an opportunity to bring together community builders from around the world so they can connect with one another, hear from our executives about the latest product features and learn from each other’s experiences. This year, FCS will be hosted virtually and we will showcase our latest products that will empower group members and admins to build meaningful and impactful communities and highlight those making a difference across the world.”

Last year’s Communities Summit gave us a glimpse of Facebook’s various new group features, featuring a range of moderation tools, new group types, group ad options, and more. As of late, Facebook has been at work either introducing or reworking group features. Core-function wise, Its most recent test is focused on multi-group post sharing, while on the wellbeing side, the platform is also testing what it calls ‘Community Awards’ in the hopes that it encourages positive contributions.

These topics will likely be discussed at the summit, with the potential of Facebook announcing even more group-focused updates in the following months. As usage has been identified as being one of the platform’s key engagement options, focusing on the development of initiatives centered on group management and interaction is one definitive way of ensuring that it remains high.

In line with this, its new ‘Community Awards’ program essentially “spotlights” moderators, celebrating the work that they do to build and maintain communities. Ironically, one could argue why Facebook took a while before it launched a program that celebrates people for doing what Facebook was intended to be used for in the first place – social networking.

“The first-ever Facebook Community Awards feature 22 nominees across seven categories, who are doing meaningful work by inspiring others, making an impact and bringing people together across various interests and topics.”

7 lucky winners get to enjoy $50,000 each as support to further drive their communities’ growth. The stipulations for the awards are as follows:

“To help select the winners, we want to give people a chance to hear their stories and vote for their favorites. Vote for who you find the most inspiring here. Voting is available on mobile devices and is open from October 7 – October 22. Limited to one vote per category per person. Award winners will be announced at the Facebook Communities Summit.”

The Wrap

Out of its 2.89 billion monthly active users, around 1.8 billion are active ‘Facebook Groups’ users, meaning that about 62% of all Facebook users, in some way, use groups. Such a statistic only means that groups remain one of Facebook’s key elements and that maintaining high group activity is tantamount to maintaining overall platform use and engagement.

With people slowly shying away from public sharing (and from all the ‘hate’ that supposedly comes with it), The usage and relevance of groups continue to rise. Amidst the alienating restrictions brought about by COVID, group activity was made even more resonant. Whilst people continuously seem to seek out more private and progressive connections online, concerns regarding filter bubbles and the formation of radical groups can’t help but pop up, albeit sporadically at best.

Nevertheless, we believe that this, especially if you consider that Facebook has been scrutinized on all sides lately, is rare news in which the platform was able to announce truly wholesome things.

If you’re interested in joining, you can RSVP to the event here.

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Sources

https://bit.ly/3my8grr