Stories on Facebook Lite, new tools for Group Admins and more!

The people at Facebook have been putting in a lot of hard work with 4 new developments coming in from the social media giant with new tools for Facebook Group admins, Stories on Facebook Lite, and more.

In addition to new tools for Facebook Group Admins, and Stories on Facebook Lite, automobiles can now be put on sale on the platform, and Workplace too has scripted a significant milestone!

Group admins on Facebook will now have better control and management over their Facebook Groups with these new tools and features, Welcome Posts, Badges, Member Profiles, and additional tools with insights around best times to post for high engagement and more.

Facebook Group Admins can now write Welcome Posts which will automatically tag new members in the post which is a useful community building tool, and Badges, which are aimed at having members, moderators and Group Admins identify each other easily.

Member Profiles help Group members see publicly available information about the person on a Group specific profile. “When group members click on another person’s name they will be directed to a group-specific profile, based on publicly-available information like things they may share in common and a feed of that person’s activity in the group.”

Finally, “We’ve expanded the Group Insights tool to include helpful personalized tips, like scheduling posts at times when members are most engaged. We’ve also heard that conversations in even the most supportive groups can sometimes get heated, so we’ve created more tools for admins to manage members that might have forgotten group rules of conduct. Admins can now temporarily turn off a member’s ability to comment and post, and remove members who violate their community’s rules from multiple groups they manage in a single click.” says Alex Deve from Facebook on the blog post.

You can read more about it here.

Stories on Facebook Lite

The second new update from the house, Stories on Facebook Lite, something that makes very little sense, since the entire point of the app is that it was rolled out for people who either cannot afford to spend too much data, or live in territories with questionable internet connectivity.

Source

Bryan Clark from The Next Web shares a similar opinion, “It’s both strange, and seemingly contradictory to the overarching goal of the Lite — to provide the essentials of Facebook, while stripping away fluff. And Stories, regardless of what that one person who used it that one time tells you, is fluff.”

Car Sales on Facebook Marketplace

Now with Facebook Marketplace and Car Sales, Business Insider reports that Facebook has entered into a partnership with Edmunds, Cars.com and more automobile dealers for car listings in Marketplace.

Instead, those interested in a dealer-listed car they see on Marketplace will be prompted to contact the dealer directly via Facebook Messenger, Marketplace head of product Vivek Sharma told Business Insider.

Source

Facebook will also let users compare a listing's price to Kelley Blue Book, he said. “Facebook has partnered with a number of outside partners, like eBay for its daily deals and Eventbrite for event tickets, but has yet to allow for transactions to take place on its platform."

If successful, Facebook could consider partnerships with other used and new car dealers in other countries, with the likes of Carwale.com, OLX,  and more.

Facebook Workplace

Fortune reports that Facebook Workplace is now being used by over 30,000 Organizations, a significant growth from 14,000 organizations in April this year, and the social network has rechristened its chat app, the more direct competitor to Slack in the workplace communication category, as Workplace Chat.

Workplace Chat which was earlier available as a mobile app, is now also available as a desktop computer app, one of the most requested features from Workplace users according to Simon Cross, Product Manager at Facebook Workplace as reported by Fortune.

"Additionally, in the next few weeks, Workplace Chat will debut the ability for users to do group video chats, similar to Google Hangouts or Microsoft’s Skype for Business service. Up to 50 people will be able to join a video conference call, Cross said."