
Facebook's insatiable thirst for data is about to pay off: its most recent updates will help you find parties, concert tickets, and events in your area.
Facebook has become the standard for online event invitations almost by accident, but the company is finally embracing its status and completely revamping the way users find, share, and attend events. According to a Tech Crunch report, a recent iOS update has offered greater flexibility when searching for events, and even recommends similar events that may interest a given user.
Gone are the days of random events on random dates popping up in your news feed. The new events page offers the ability to search for different types of events, including music, food and drinks, nightlife, sports and fitness, fine arts & crafts, community, film and photography, performing arts, and causes.
Users searching for something to do on a weekend afternoon or evening will not need to go any further than the events tab on Facebook. If you have an idea of where you would like to go, Facebook can help you find the perfect event in your area.
A number of events discovery attempts have been made by other companies, but few have reached audiences large enough to sustain a growing business without the help of Facebook’s massive user base. Eventbrite, for instance, focuses heavily on the sale of tickets, while Foursquare has remained focused on location services while offering little in the way of data-driven real-time event suggestions.
Apps like Songkick have proven useful for finding a specific concert in your area without attempting to sell a ticket, and the app DoStuff does a good job of compiling nightclub listings going on in a given location. Still, Facebook’s ubiquity has allowed it to effortlessly settle in as the new place to go to search for events.
Facebook events had roughly 450 million users in July 2015, and the company is finally reaching out to the people and giving them a more interactive platform to find out what’s happening. The new updates will suggest events, allow you to subscribe to a page that throws regular events, allow you to post events from other websites, give the option to purchase tickets, send reminder notifications, preview content from past events, and display viral events in the News Feed.
More information on Facebook’s standalone mobile app features for iOS can be found here.
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