Interesting thoughts.
One thing that would be useful is something quite radical:
A Facebook group migration tool. It could feature:
- Full post and discussion migration
- automatic setup of accounts with Facebook login integration
- a better mobile app for notifications.
With these three things and an easy to setup freemium cloud service (already exists!) one could provide a terrific alternative to Facebook groups.
So the Facebook Groups API is fairly limited for migration. This is where a browser plugin could come in useful. In particular what you need is not a full wholesale migration of legacy content but rather a move of the meta data of the group plus invitations for the users. The legacy conversations just stay in Facebook.
Injecting discourse into Facebook? Not so much in my opinion. Moving people into a new environment that’s better but not so unfamiliar? Better.