Events are a major part of Facebook, and today the social networking giant is beefing up its Events functionality to make it even bigger.
Facebook is now showing Featured Events to iOS users in 10 U.S. cities: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Users in those cities should now see a Featured Events option at the top of the Events section. When clicked, they’ll see events hand-picked by Facebook employees.
There are some rules that Facebook will follow when it comes to surfacing a shindig in the Featured Events section. The curators will not highlight events that are focused on politics or places of worship, and they’ll also avoid small or private events that aren’t meant for a ton of people.
And if you’re thinking that this could lead to Facebook making a dedicated Events app given FB’s history of launching standalone apps for its features, Facebook says that it has no plans for such an app.
Finally, Facebook will offer event categories alongside its curated list of events to help you find other events that you might be interested in. These will be broken up into categories like “Music” and “Food” as well as time frames like “This weekend” to help you find something that fits your interests and availability.
Facebook’s new Events features could be helpful in finding things for people to do in their cities. I’m sure that most everyone has been bored and thought “What is there to do?” at least once before, and Featured Events will help to answer that question. Now we just have to wait and see if they become popular and expand to other U.S. cities.
