Social Groups - Purpose?

[livtech]

Ok, so I've enabled the social groups but they aren't getting used and quite frankly I don't see the point of them yet. Can someone explain to me how they could be of benefit, and how I could use them within my community? Most of my members are there cause of the forum itself (obviously) and aren't sold on getting a heap of add-ons. (Blogs failed in my community, as an example.)

Any tips appreciated.

[GHST]

i use mine for gang wars. just playing around though. I face the same problem as you. they neglect the social groups.

I would guess that in a large community, rather than creating new forums to meet the needs of a certain group, a new social group could be used to keep members entertained.

the groups are able to be invite only and not viewable to outsiders.

[Lynne]

the groups are able to be invite only and not viewable to outsiders.

Just to clarify, those are two different settings. An invite only group is not necessarily not viewable to others unless they check the box that says you must be a member to view the messages.


We just upgraded from 3.6 to 3.8 a month ago. We only have about 34 groups with a bit over 500 messages. I am trying to push them a bit because I think they have the potential of being kinda fun. For instance, I have a music site and a few users have created a group just to talk about their favorite group. We also have a group for users to share recipes because previously they were sharing them all in a couple of threads and now they can have one 'discussion' per recipe. We have some silly groups like 'Destroy all Sentient Robots' and someone made a group in response for our Posterbot "Save Posterbot!" (our posterbot occasionally talks back to users who post ) . So, they are kinda whatever you make of them.