Facebook has come a long way
What began as a souped up college directory has expanded to perhaps one of the most versatile sites on the web. Facebook has become more than just a social network – it can function as a work platform, a messenger, and may come to serve as a sort of customized events directory.
Facebook is changing the way users can be invited to events – and small businesses with a Facebook Page should take note. In the past, if your company hoped to host an event, your options for inviting people in your network were limited. You could make an event invitation from your Facebook Page, but, in order to avoid spam, Facebook prevented you from inviting everyone who had “liked” your Page.
You could post your event on your Page’s wall and cross your fingers that people were paying close attention, or you the page administrator could invite people from their list of personal friends. Of course, you could always manually send messages to each fan of the Page – a tedious and time consuming task. Lastly, you could pay to advertise your event and again, hope the right people saw the ad.
Facebook has created a new loophole
While still avoiding spamming the Page’s entire fan base, Facebook has created a new loophole for inviting fans of your company to your events. You can now collect “subscribers’ who are all automatically invited whenever you host an event. Furthermore, Facebook will automatically place the event on the subscriber’s Facebook Calendar. This function seems like it could be particularly useful for regularly occurring events, such as monthly sales.
Facebook’s Events product manager, Aditya Koolwal, says that there are other potential improvements on the drawing board as well. Soon, you may be able to invite internet users who do not have a Facebook account to view event invitations via email. And, like much of the web, Facebook events will become increasingly personalized; your newsfeed will be able to recommend events that might interest you, based on which events you’ve attended in the past.
They’re also working on making it easy for event hosts and Page managers to send personal invites and stay connected to fans via Messenger. It sounds like Facebook is even considering a standalone Events app (shocker, another standalone app) – a move that could make Facebook not only your primary social network, but also the main way you stay in the know about local events.
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