Facebook Gaming introducing Streamer Fan Groups to help foster communities

Facebook Gaming has launched Streamer Fan Groups to help content creators grow their communities on the social media platform. It's notable news that comes as Facebook attempts to build out its streaming platform to cement its place alongside rivals like Twitch and YouTube.

The company explained that Streamer Fan Groups are designed to increase engagement and growth, spark "richer" communication via chats and rooms sorted by interests, and enable collective play with other group members.

"Give your community and fans an easy place to come together and engage around your content while you’re live or offline. As you go live, you can select the option to distribute your stream to the group and viewers will also be prompted to join your group," wrote the company in an explainer.

"We hope Streamer Fan Groups will help your audience stay engaged with each other and your content before, during, and after your streams."

The new functionality will initially be rolled out to a small subset off creators, with Facebook hoping to gather feedback and made improvements ahead of an official launch. 

The arrival of Streamer Fan Groups comes just over a year after Facebook launched a dedicated Facebook Gaming mobile app to place its streamers "in the foreground."

"We don’t want to be the background window in a Chrome tab while someone is doing their homework or doing something else," commented Facebook at the time. "With mobile, if you have the app open and you're using the app, it’s in the foreground. You can’t do anything else on your mobile phone, and that is extremely powerful."