Facebook to Roll out Handpicked Event Listings in Ten Cities

Over 580 million people use Facebook Events every month, and a huge chunk of that number find these events through their news feeds. Facebook events has quietly grown into one of the platform’s strongest features, so it makes sense that the social network is trying to ramp up reliance on its Events function. Starting today, iOS users in 10 American cities will see an option for Featured Events, which are handpicked events by Facebook’s curators. They will be perusing each city’s top events in art, entertainment, festival, family, fitness, F&B, community, music, sports and much more.

“You can think about it like a weekend or weekly digest of cool stuff that you can do in your city,” says Facebook Events product manager Aditya Koolwal. The first 10 cities are Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., and potentially more very soon if it works well.

Facebook already has human curators for its trending news, so having personally curated events makes sense. Previously, Facebook relied on algorithms to sort events in sections such as “Popular With Friends” or “Suggested for You.” These were garnered through analyzing what your friends have RSVP’d for, your interests and past events. “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,” says Koolwal.