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Comment by tangled_zans | Hacker News Reader

Obvious question, but which one of you here actually uses facebook groups and what for?

I'm sure I'm a member of a whole bunch, but aside from using them to coordinate society activities back at uni, I haven't really used them in years. I always found the interface to be ugly as hell, and if I want to join a large thriving community on topic X then I just go on /r/topicX.

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The super smash bros melee tournament scene is pretty reliant on facebook. Every region/area has its own facebook group where people post about events and find each other. Tournaments (both large ones* and small, local ones) typically use facebook events as their primary page (I'd even go as far as to say that facebook events help drive up attendance. I've seen local tournaments get more attendance because the TO made a fb event). I think fighting game communities in general make solid use of facebook groups and events.

* smash.gg is also used heavily for majors as of late though

My local gym has running & cycling clubs and uses fb groups to coordinate events, provide a social area for members to share stuff, and maintains pages where they curate important information for the group.

FB isn't the only way to do this, of course, but it's certainly low friction for most members, since they generally already are guaranteed to have a personal FB account.

There is a Dutch Facebook group for determination of plants and animals, people post pictures there and there is always a real expert around who can actually identify your bird feather / tiny spider / insect / fungus / etc often down to the exact species (out of 800 in some group of beetles, say). It's a wonderful group to lurk in.

I'm a pretty avid cyclist and there are marketplaces for second hand bikes & accessories that I look at almost daily. I have also bought quite a few things through there too.

Interface has definitely improved of late - Facebook clearly are prioritising adding in functionality like being able to give reviews on sellers etc.

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