Get to Know Facebook's Slick New Groups App
— -- Facebook is on a quest to take over your smart phone -- one app at a time.
The company announced today that it is launching another slick standalone app, this time for groups.
Unlike the messenger app, the groups functionality will not be stripped out of the main Facebook app since the company said many users interact with groups via their newsfeed -- which is the central part of the main Facebook app experience.
Instead, Groups is designed to be a complementary experience for the most frequent users of the service and people who want another avenue for engagement.
The groups app has a simple, crisp design allowing users to see their most frequently used groups at the top of the main screen.
In a matter of just a few taps, users can create new groups, post to existing ones and discover new communities to join.
More than half a billion people use Facebook's standalone messenger app, which was launched in 2011. Earlier this year, the company stripped the messenger function out of the main app and prompted users to download a new app.
During Facebook's third quarter earnings call last month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors to expect more standalone app experiences from Facebook.
"One of the things that's happening on mobile is that there's an increased focus for apps to do one thing really well," Zuckerberg said. "So on desktop, a lot of the things that might have fit well into a single Facebook website, now in order to best serve people, you need to build multiple standalone different apps."
At a town hall earlier this month, Zuckerberg said asking people to download a new app was a "short term painful thing."
"The primary purpose of the Facebook app is News Feed. Messaging was this behavior people were doing more and more," Zuckerberg said. Having to go into an app and take a bunch of steps to get to messaging is a lot of friction."
