Facebook Wants to Suggest Featured Events to You

Tech Crunch

Let's face it, for many of us, the only point in using Facebook is being able to plan and talk about events. It was one of Facebook's smartest features, but aside from their ride-share plans, Facebook doesn't tend to do very much to them. But now Facebook want to offer events to people who may not have something to do that weekend, who want to discover something new or just to people who might decide last minute to attend as it pops up.

These suggested events can be found in the events section of the app. Above your current events, you'll see a little carousel of featured events as well as options for curated events focusing on the weekend, food and other similar event topics. Within these sections, there will be a list of carefully curated events that can host a lot of people in your area. These events will not be religious or political so you won't have to worry about any controversy. The events are picked by members of staff, but they're supposed to find a wide range of events that can appeal to everyone as well as be carefully accessed. These could pop up weeks in advance, but this is so you have plenty of time to plan. If you'd like to get an event featured then you're just going to have to come up with a really good event as buying an advert for it will not make your event priority.

As well as this there will be new features for regular event users. If you organise a lot of events yourself, then there's a new tab which will allow you to see who regularly doesn't respond to your invites. This is great because no one wants to spam their friends and acquaintances with invites if they just don't want to come as then that person isn't going to want to interact with you. Once you know exactly who these people are you can stop spamming them unless you know you're organising something that they'll like. Regular users of the new events system will also get a bonus as times go on. Once an event pops up that they'll be interested in, they'll receive a notification within plenty of time so they can check things out and organise things with friends if they want to go. That in itself could actually be pretty useful, but only if the suggested algorithm works well.

Facebook would like users to know that at the moment there isn't likely to be a specialised events app. It takes a lot of work to create an app and even this new feature is only being tested in a few US cities on iOS for the moment. Those cities are; Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C. If this feature works well over the coming months, then it will be rolled out to more cities, but if you live in a village then this probably isn't going to be popping up on your phone anytime soon.

Rosina Brooker

Rosina is a Songbird writer with a degree in Creative Writing. She's trying to focus on her novel on the side but is glad to be playing around with apps and writing about them in the mean time! Follow her @Songbird_Rosina

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