Social media giant Facebook embarks on a new app adventure with the launch of the company’s most recent app, dubbed ‘Events,’ as it names suggests, the application allows users to keep all of their social activities on track and in the same place.
‘Events,’ is an evolution of the Facebook tool that allows a user to browse upcoming trough activities between their social group and interests. However, the social media company decided to transform the tool and turn it into a whole app. Facebook’s decision of turning a simple tool into a single app, has been well though as Casey Newton from The Verge suggests, the media company doesn’t take this sort of decision for granted and has analyzed its market before launching the new app.
According to Statista.com, Facebook had over the second quarter of the current year, over 1 billion active users on its platform and just like they did with the Facebook Messenger, the company hopes to make ‘Events’ a strong tool among its users.
What to expect from Facebook Events
The newly launched app is an extension from what the standard Facebook user already knows, people can get invited to events, create one and confirm or decline its assistance to it.
With a minimalistic and clean view, Facebook Events is available for iOS users, who can download the app and schedule its upcoming activities and meet-ups with friends thanks to a calendar-ish feature in the app.
The app user can browse upcoming events near its community and works with Facebook’s algorithm based on the likes, searches, and friend’s events, although a “search” tab has been integrated so that the user can go straight to his goal.
One of the most celebrated upgrades of the app is the fact that it doesn’t show any ads, videos or photos related to the upcoming events, featuring a fresher and more neat view to the user.
All of the information saved in the app will automatically be linked to the user’s Facebook profile and will work just as it did when the tool was part of the social media. The assistance to an event will be managed just as it used to in the past.
According to the company, the primary goal of Facebook events is to eliminate the “FOMO”-Fear of missing out- on the common user. Currently, the company is in the trial phase of the app, to understand how well it works with its audience and if its 1 billion users find it appealing.
Even though the app is only available for iOS users, Facebook hopes to launch the Android version soon.
Why invest in a single app?
Since Mr. Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in 2004 with his Harvard colleagues, the social media has transformed itself into the center of internet interaction among common users.
As of 2015, the company’s revenue was estimated at $17.928 billion with a net income of $3.688 billion and by investing in other projects such as Instagram and Whatsapp, the social media has been running the modern market of social communications.
Facebook ‘events’ has been part of social media since it was first born, however, the tool has upgraded over the past years, adapting itself to the common user needs. Initially, the tool allowed a user to be invited or invite someone to an ‘upcoming event’ whether it was a concert or a friend’s get together, it served as a form of a modern-day calendar for social media users.
According to the company, the events tool has over 650 million active users each month with a 41% of them engaging in public events thanks to the Facebook feature. Almost 47 million events were created last year, with 35 million people viewing the suggestion of an event daily.
After messenger,- a Facebook tool that evolved into the company’s first independent application- Events is the most used tool within the social media. Which serves as the company’s main reason to invest in a single app.
In 2014, creator and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, explained in a press conference why embarking into a single app seemed as a risky road for the company and why the social media was attempting to turn Messenger into a singular.
“Asking folks to install another app is a short-term painful thing, but if we wanted to focus on serving this we had to build a focused experience. We’re trying to do a service that’s good for everyone,” said Zuckerberg in a press conference, according to Venture.
Source: Facebook Newsroom