Just released an upgrade to the community site for fencing.net that includes what the developers call “social groups” functionality.

This is sort of like Facebook where you can create groups and these have their own message boards and photo albums. The administrator can keep the group moderated (for only in-house club or team discussions) or open it up for all to see and only group members to write/post.

The fencers at fencing.net are already a little tribal in their activities, so this should allow some more “tribes” to start up and flourish without drowning in the mass of threads that the general discussion area and water cooler are.

A couple of groups were created within hours of the upgrade. Here are a couple:
Clemson Fencers

Sabre Fencers

We’ll see how these grow.