Continuing its strategy of launching standalone apps for various functions, Facebook announced a new Facebook Groups app, which comes from its Creative Labs division. This one is immediately available for both Android and iOS (some of the other apps have been iOS only).

“Every month, 700 million people use Facebook Groups to stay in touch with family, collaborate on projects, plan trips and offer support to friends – and we built this app to help people share faster and more easily with all the groups in their life,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews in an email. “With the Facebook Groups app, you can easily discuss, plan and collaborate – nothing gets lost in the shuffle of text messages or email, and you can choose how and when to receive notifications.”

Interestingly, you’ll still be able to use Facebook Groups in the main Facebook app, which should please users, considering how upset everybody got about Facebook forcing people to use the Messenger app.

Defending the Messener move, CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said it was basically too much friction to tap a tab in the Facebook app for messaging, so that’s why you have to use a different app now. Obviously this is a ridiculous explanation, especially considering that everybody knows Facebook is going to add money-related features to Messenger.

This is most likely the reason Facebook is going to continue to let people use the Groups feature within the Facebook app. It’s not looking to monetize it just yet.

The Groups app shows you all your Groups in one place, and prioritizes the ones you use the most. It also lets you start new groups, track notifications, and see suggested groups based on pages you’ve liked.

Image via Facebook