Apr 26, 2011 11:20 GMT  ·  By

Last October, Facebook introduced the revamped Groups feature which was aimed at making the Facebook experience more meaningful for your social circles, or groups. Basically, it enabled you to share and connect with only a select number of people. Now the feature is getting a big upgrade with Facebook adding some badly needed features and making it a lot more useful.

"In the six months since our launch, people have created over 50 million Groups on Facebook. It's grown quickly because of its social design," Facebook's Elliot Lynde, a software engineer, wrote.

"Instead of making everyone build and manage individual friend lists, one person can create a group for their families and everyone in the family gets to use it," he explained.

"We've received some great feedback about how people are using Groups and what new features they would like to see. Today, we're happy to announce some new improvements, including integration with Questions, the ability to upload photo albums, and additional membership controls," he announced.

Groups filled an obvious need for the social network

Since launch, Facebook has had a chance to see how well Groups performs in action and it seems that people are using the feature as intended, to connect with the different people in their lives.

The need for a Groups feature was more than obvious which explains why it proved so popular since launch, but the initial version has been rather limited. Thankfully, some of the most sorely needed features have now been added.

Groups get dedicated photo albums

One that will likely see the most use is the possibility of uploading photo albums to groups. Until now, you could post individual photos, as status updates, or share a link to an existing album.

Now though, you can add an album to the group itself for all members to see. Since Facebook Photos was already a social experience by definition, the ability to share photos from a family get-together with your Family groups, or from an office party with your colleagues only makes a lot of sense.

Facebook questions and polls in groups

Another obvious addition is the ability to create Facebook questions and polls inside the group environment. The questions feature was recently relaunched and it molds itself perfectly with groups since most questions will interest just your family or coworkers or some friends.

What's more, poll apps have always been quite popular on the site, so creating a poll in a group and letting the members decide on the next outing for example is a great addition.

Better privacy options and the send button

Admins of Closed or Secret groups can now require new users to be approved before being let in, boosting the privacy of these groups. Facebook is also launching a Send button, in a testing phase, which will sit along side the Like button but will enable users to share a link with only a few friends or groups.