Facebook announces Featured Events capability to show human-curated list of recommendations

Facebook today has announced a new Featured Events capability that will make it even easier for users to find nearby ongoings right in the Facebook app itself. While Facebook already has support for Events, with 550 million people taking advantage of it each month, the company hopes that Featured Events will give more a more personalized experience.

Featured Events is launching to iOS users in 10 U.S. cities and consists of the top “art, entertainment, family, festival, fitness, food & drink, learning, community, music, and sports events” in each city. Featured Events will appear at the top of the existing Events screen in the Facebook app and the company will work to ensure that the places and events it lists can accommodate for the added people who could come thanks to the Facebook listing. The lists in each city are hand curated by Facebook’s staff (via TechCrunch). 

“What we do is have a team of people who are basically looking at events on Facebook that have broad appeal, that a lot of people could go to, and they’re highlighting ones they think will be good to list out,” Facebook Events product manager Aditya Koolwal said.

Additionally, users will start to see specific categories and timeframes for events, such as “Music,” “Food,” or “This weekend.” But, despite Facebook’s obsession with breaking features out into their own individual apps, there are currently no plans to release a standalone Events app.

While Facebook hasn’t ruled out eventually allowing companies to purchase a spot in the Featured Events list, the company says that currently buying ads doesn’t increase the likelihood of being featured.

At first, Featured Events will be available in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., but if all goes well then the capability could expand to additional cities.

The latest version of the Facebook app is available on the App Store.