Well, because it's not a fantastic aggregator.
The tools we have could be improved, and new ones added. Let's look at three tricks for doing that, apps that could be added to your group page on an imaginary version of Facebook.
- Iterative Editing: This is the wiki trick. Group memory as a thing people can edit, and revert, which has a small amount of hierarchy and a lot of open-ended "jump in"! A thinking group would want to be able to build up a memory that can be referenced; this is a solid option. Googledocs also does this trick, as did the not-so-late, mostly-unlamented Wave. But a group needs to be doing before it needs to remember what it did.
- Signal Vs. Noise Pictures: Anyone can add a picture to this gallery,but when you visit it, you're prompted to vote which of a given pair of pictures is "signal", an which is "noise". Pictures with a bad enough "noise" record are slowly parsed away. Pictures with high "signal" ratings are used by the group as decoration on site, for protest signs if appropriate, and so on. The point here is that the group as a whole can develop and police their identity.
- Decision Markets: So, joining gets you a little bit of "group currency", which can grow (by, say, providing high-signal stuff for the gallery above, or wiki-work, or organizing group events). This currency also goes to the Decision Market, where ideas for things the group should do are plunked down, and you can invest it in those ideas. Top ideas are also disseminated through the group pages automatically, as calls to action.
Now, are these the best of the best possible methods for getting group memory, cohesive identity, and calls to action? Probably not, but they're workable. Are those functions the most important functions a group needs to add in order to be incredible? Again, probably not, but they do belong on the list.
Why don't we have these tools on that platform? Well, because even though they're relatively simple, they'd take resources to develop, and having the group will to act is not the same as having the group impulse to get better at action.
In addition, these same tools can already be found scattered across the web - consolidating them into FB would only act as an accelerant, not an invention. We'll get the consolidated device, though - with these tools or others, on my imaginary facebook, or on some other platform for group action.
Slowly, one step at a time, we're building a lever which, in the hands of the motivated, the courageous, and the energetic, can topple kingdoms. It already works; I'd just like to see it work better.
