Facebook Debuts Groups for Schools with File Sharing

Facebook is going back to its roots, in a way, with the recently introduced Groups for Schools. As the name suggests, the feature is designed to make it easier for people that go to the same school to create groups.

The way it does this is by only allowing people with the same .edu email address to join these groups. Facebook also made it a bit easier to contact anyone in your school, even if you're not friends with them.

"Today we're announcing Groups for Schools, which allow people with an active school email address to join groups at their college or university," Facebook announced.

"You can join a group for your major to discuss classes, for your sorority to plan upcoming events, or for your dorm to share photos," it added.

The feature is not available to all schools yet, but it is rolling out gradually. It has been in testing so far with a few colleges, and users can sign up to be notified when it is available for their school as well.

Groups for Schools comes with a few changes from regular groups. One of the biggest is file sharing, enabling students to collaborate on school projects and share files that they may need via the groups.

Of course, there are plenty of file sharing options out there, from Dropbox to Google Docs, which bypasses the need to share a file. The fact that the Facebook feature is limited to 25 MB per file doesn't really make its case.

The other welcomed change is that only people that go to your school will be able to see what's posted inside these groups, so you don't have to worry about your parents or a potential employer snooping in. Then again, with professors lurking about, things probably aren't going to get too wild in there.