Facebook is sharpening up the look of Facebook Events with a number of new features and illustrations designed to improve how things look and feel for users. Facebook currently has around 1.5 billion monthly users but only 135 million Events were created on the service in 2014: there’s considerable room for expansion here. We’ve also ready seen Facebook introduce a means of notifying customers of popular events, or those that your friends are going to, using a flagging system on the side of your newsfeed. This is one feature that is set to be built upon going forwards. It seems that Facebook is aiming to make Facebook Events another core pillar of the social networking service. However, alongside these improvements, Facebook is also weighing up new ways of showing interest – or at least a passing interest – in an event or function: options that may be included for an event are to “Follow” or “Remind me,” which will increase the number of available options. Currently, customers can accept, decline or mark as a “maybe” an invitation to an event. Facebook is also planning to introduce more notifications designed to keep customers aware of what’s going on in their location, too.
Another change is to differentiate events from Public or Private. Public events could include more prominent images and additional advertising space, for example for artist of group profiles and contact details. Private events are set to benefit from new artwork with thirty six themes being added this week (including topics such as “family,” “travel” and “seasons”). Facebook may be adding more images in the coming months: this should improve how events look to potential guests and be a smoother, cleaner approach than simply hitting up Google Images for “cheesecake and gin” images. Facebook’s Events Product Manager, Kevin Schaefer, said this on the matter: “When you talk to people who create private events, one of the things they want to say is that they want to personalize their event and make it their own.” Customers will still have the ability to upload their own images or photographs to Events.
It seems Facebook is improving the service by creating a more professional look and feel; we’ve seen other artwork appearing across the site and application, plus images that have been appearing in the News Feed. One of Facebook’s illustrators explained to the source website: “You can trace a line between illustrative work that’s been popping up on products across Facebook, stuff that’s gradually been appearing in the News Feed. They’re pared down, geometric, flat-color. [Event themes] shouldn’t be too much of a culture shock for people who are used to illustrations on Facebook.” By improving the look and feel of the application, it is hoping to become even more embedded into our lives.
