I actually think it's safe to go ahead. I'm not making any more huge changes to them, other than unlocking/ removing videos and polls for them and I won't be able to do that for a few days because there are 300+ and I have to do it by hand. The dev is going to make some changes to the appearance, but that doesn't affect the functionality of groups. We're going to get some big @ss buttons for posting and viewing discussions and make it more obvious who started a discussion, but those changes will be global and change all the groups at once.
Yes, you can make your own groups now. I mostly have them tamed down, but I need to go through all 300+ again and manually unlock or remove videos/ polls depending on the type of group.
But, yeah, go for it. Flipper was our first victim and made the opera group already.
I made a tutorial for it: http://www.answermug.com/faq/view/8/57/58/0/how-do-i-create-a-group but it looks like my photos mysteriously vanished during the migration. :/ Feel free to play with the settings and I'll check them all before I open the group up for joining.