On Wednesday morning, 18 May, 2011, we replaced the navigation tabs for the 'Groups' feature on the All Oars Network, thereby retiring the old groups application, Network Now!, and bringing the new groups application, All Oars Groups, online.

For the past month, we have been working on the transition between the two applications, first renaming the Network Now! labels as All Oars groups, and then manually populating the new application with the groups from Network Now!

The new application brings with it a host of networking features including instantaneous friending on the All Oars Network, messaging, dedicated discussion forums for the groups with group page widgets that show the latest posts for each group, as well as RSS feeds. The new groups feature also has a news article feature that helps to highlight news and provides for 'liking' and also commenting.

When you click on the Group navigation tab, you will see 'My Groups,' a section that lists all of the groups that you have joined, as well as a sidebar that shows the latest posts from all of your groups.

In a show of features and capabilities, mass pms (personal messages) were sent to the largest groups notifying them of the change.

We hope you enjoy the new groups feature and we welcome your comments and suggestions.