Facebook groups have taken a back seat over the last couple of years, with Pages becoming the first choice for people, charities or companies setting up a space to discuss shared interests. Recently, though, FB has begun to look again at its offering to groups, and now it has some serious competition in the form of G+ communities. Here’s a quick overview of G+ communities, to help you decide whether you want to encourage your supporters to develop one or the other.

For someone to spend online time with people sharing your views or interests, the Facebook group has long been the obvious choice: it’s free, quick to set up by anyone, and provides a way to connect with other people. In recent years Facebook has added new functions to its group offering, such as group email and DropBox.

Mashable has an excellent round up of groups, and what you can do with them.

Now Google+ is making a claim on this fertile ground with its new offering: G+ Communities.

G+ communities appear to offer many of the same functions as their older cousin, the Facebook group: easy to set up and join, scope for public or private communities, and the ability to post and update either directly or via the G+ button. What’s really interesting, though, is what they offer that’s unique to Google+ – namely, starting a Hangout straight from a community, organising postings by category, and updating by mobile.

If you want to learn more about G+ communities, try this Mashable article or take a tour.

I haven’t been able to find out how many Google+ communities already exist, but a quick search for charities has found just one pioneer: Shine charity.

Are you helping your supporters to use the new G+ communities?