Facebook has publicly stated their intent to launch a payments platform and have even begun testing it with multiple application developers but one area where they’ve yet to integrate is their own products. While the company has tested a system which enables users to send credits, nothing has been released since those initial tests. One area where we see a ton of potential is Facebook events, which has become one of Facebook’s most popular applications.
Facebook even reported that Facebook events is larger than evite, which was once the most dominant site for social event planning. Eventbrite has become a dominant player in the event registration space though, especially for paid events. Facebook is great for attracting users to your events but if you want to pay, you’ll have to go use another platform. With so many users on Facebook events though, it only makes sense to expand their offering to a paid service.
Large transactions can be challenging to manage though and Facebook’s new payment system is not intended for large transactions as far as we know. Many industry insiders have been calling it a “micro-transactions” platform. Facebook is the leader in online events since it’s so easy to use but even with its simplicity we expect the product’s functionality to expand. With millions of events taking place around the world, the events application present a great way to collect money.
So how much money is it worth to Facebook? We’d guess that events are already generating tens of millions of dollars a year in terms of their percentage of pageviews on Facebook but with the addition of payments, the company could be generating far more. How much money exactly? How about 10 bazillion dollars!!!! Alright, maybe we don’t actually know the exact amount but I’d bet that it would generate a lot.
Do you think integrating payments with Facebook’s event platform makes much sense?
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If they improved events, i could see that being a $50M a year business. Maybe more. I would bet they do over a million "events" per month.
If they managed ticket sales and transactions, they could make a ton on commissions.
Comment by Brian Breslin — July 20, 2009 @ 5:55 pm
It's an enormously flattering question.
Comment by Jack Mardack — July 20, 2009 @ 10:00 pm
I think it will become another avenue for folks to use to collect fees for events, but we've still got to keep in mind the fact that there are still many people that are not using Facebook and who will still rather stay on something like Evite of Eventbrite.
It would also be great to have some flexibility to add the additional fields to collect information for things like t-shirt sizes or other items that the existing systems allow you to do. That said, if they can pull it off, this would become a big coup for Facebook.
Comment by Andre Natta — July 21, 2009 @ 6:15 am
Sounds like a good opportunity for a partnership.
Comment by jde — July 21, 2009 @ 11:27 pm
I came across this article this weekend looking for new statistics on Facebook events. It is humbling to read as I just launched today, in fact, an application that you describe in this article.
This is extremely affordable especially in comparison to EventBrite. Just to give you an idea, I am charging $1.98 for the entire event regardless of how many people come or what your registration fee is. I also included YouTube videos to illustrate how to add the application, create an event, promote an event and earn money, reselling seats, and requesting payments. Look in the FAQ section. I welcome any feedback. And if your event is Free, there is no cost. For free events, you can limit seating. If that limit reached, invitees can put themselves on a waiting list so that they can be notified when someone cancels.
Comment by Telap Tan — September 1, 2009 @ 9:35 am