Do you have family members on Facebook? It seems like more and more of us are finding our extended family on there lately, and Facebook has developed another way for us to get more involved with those web-savvy relatives by creating private family Facebook groups.

Group Creation

Creating your own private family group is very simple. Just go to this link and follow the three quick steps: name the group, invite your Facebook family members and invite your non-Facebook family members by entering their emails.

Group Function

This private family group functions like any other group — complete with a member list, discussion board, wall, events section, etc. — but because it is private, it won’t appear anywhere on your profile.

The Details

The exception to this privacy and secrecy? Events, as one blogger explains:

When you go to create an event within the group, it’s shared either with your local network (in my case that’s Tampa Bay) or all of Facebook. The supposedly “secret” group is listed as the host of the event. So much for privacy. It would have been nice to use this feature to track family gatherings, but there’s no need to broadcast every anniversary and family reunion to the entire social network that is Facebook.

Okay, so it may not be quite as private as it says, but we still though it was a cool concept! And then we read a little bit more from the same blogger who points out that this addition could have an unintended backlash effect.

…We expect that this single feature may even lead to an explosion of Facebook sign-ups from Grandmas and Grandpas everywhere. It might even attract some of the younger kids away from MySpace so they can hang out with the family on Facebook. On second thought, maybe not. it might just make Facebook look even more like that uncool place online where all those grownups hang out.

You tell us!

So, we have two questions for you.

1. How do you feel about private family groups? Would you create one?
2. Do you think these groups will bring more families onto Facebook or will drive away the younger crowds looking for their own personal space?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 10:37 am and is filed under Child Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.