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Facebook Expand Events into a Supercharged Party Finder

TechCrunch
For a long time Facebook events largely served as a way for people to loudly and often unnecessarily declare to the world what cool nights they were planning to go to. I'm as guilty of it as anyone, but the service has gradually grown into one of the most vital, useful parts of the platform. Being able to keep track of events, bookmark them and stay up to date on the latest developments is immensely useful, and I've lost count of the number of gigs and other things that I wouldn't have known about unless one of my friends had marked themselves 'going' or 'interested'.

Well now, amazingly, Facebook have found a way to make the service even broader/better. On the iOS version of the Facebook app, an update has been rolled out which enables you to browse suggested events, based on information stored on the platform about your preferences and past attendances. Moreover, you can now search for events on specific dates, by location, so say if you know you'll be in Bristol on a given weekend, it's that much easier to find out what's going on, and whatever comes up at the top will probably be the thing you're most likely to want to go to.

Going even further than that, events are now also categorised into sections like Music, Food & Drinks, Nightlife, Sports & Fitness and Fine Arts & Crafts. What's more, the recommendation service is so precise that you're almost bound to find something you didn't already know about, and with location tagging also factored in, it's remarkably easy to just jump on the app when you're in a certain town/city and get an up-to-the-minute list of all the great stuff that's going on.

The question is, why do Facebook have such a vested interest in events at all? They don't sell tickets internally, and the more time people spend out in the real world experiencing things, the less time they'll spend gormlessly scrolling through their news feeds, right? Well, yes, but none of Facebook's competitors offer this service, and it's actually distinctly more comprehensive that any actual ticket selling site their is. The nearest any platform comes is something like Resident Adviser, and even that is substantially limited by comparison.

It's far from perfect, you're still going to get overwhelmed by spam-heavy, grossly commercial events with an RSVP count bolstered by people who have a vested interest in signal boosting, but that's a minor nitpick considering that the events service was already brilliant even before they added all this. Kudos, Facebook, you done good.



Callum is a film school graduate who is now making a name for himself as a journalist and content writer. His vices include flat whites and 90s hip-hop. Follow him @CallumAtSMF


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Facebook Expand Events into a Supercharged Party Finder Reviewed by Unknown on Monday, December 21, 2015 Rating: 5
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