Helping People Join Meaningful Communities on Facebook

One way to bring the world closer together is by helping more people join meaningful communities. It turns out most people don't seek out communities on Facebook or in the physical world. Either your friends invite you or we suggest them for you. So we're looking for ways to help people find groups that will be meaningful to them.

A lot of people follow pages on Facebook for topics they're interested in. So today, we're making it easier to join groups around the pages you follow.

Some of these groups will be lighter -- like people who follow sports teams or TV shows. Others will be more serious. Dealing with addiction can be isolating and AddictionUnscripted.com is a place for people affected by addiction to come together. Now if you join their page, you can request to join the Affected By Addiction Support Group to connect with people who are going through the same thing. So far, more than 45,000 people have joined the group to share their stories and offer support.

In today's world, we all get support from a few sources: our family and friends, our communities, and our social safety net. In our civic discussion we most often focus on our social safety net, but I've found that our communities are often just as important for taking care of us, and we need to focus just as much time on building them.

One of the most important things we can do right now is bring people closer together through communities. Changes like this are a small step in that direction.