Earlier in the year, Facebook released a revamped mission statement. According to the CEO of the most popular social media platform: “The idea for our mission is: ‘bring the world closer together’”.
“Our full mission statement is: give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. That reflects that we can’t do this ourselves, but only by empowering people to build communities and bring people together.” – Zuckerberg stated in a note to the First Facebook Community Submit in June.
The new mission statement stressed the importance of groups and in June the social media platform organised communities submit an event for Group Admins, but in what seems to be an irony to its recent leanings, is discontinuing Facebook Groups app for its iOS and Android users.
The company has announced that iOS and Android users will no longer be able to use the app from September 1, however, they will still be able to access Groups through the group feature on the Facebook Mobile App or native browser.
About 1 billion of the almost 2 billion active users on Facebook are active members of various groups, but the number of people who interact with groups via the soon to be deprecated app cannot be ascertained.
The company, however, said it is doing this because its Groups team have found “that we can do more with and for the community by investing in the main Facebook app.”
“Because we’re focusing on groups in the main Facebook app and on Facebook.com, we are discontinuing the Facebook Groups app for iOS and Android. This means you won’t be able to log into the Facebook Groups app after September 1, 2017. All of your groups from this app will be available in the main Facebook app, where you can continue to connect with all your communities.” – The announcement added.
Will the effacing of Facebook Groups App negatively impact the platform’s goal of bringing the world closer together or not? Time will definitely tell.