Facebook Upgrades Events, Integrates Wall Publisher (Updated)

-Events Guest List Icon- The publisher is rapidly becoming the central tool for publishing information through Facebook to the feed, with events being the latest product to integrate the feature. This evening Facebook began rolling out an upgraded version of events which places a publisher directly within the wall, enabling event administrators to publish content with tags. ~~We believe that all confirmed attendees will also see the content within their stream.~~ (See update below)

Up until now, all events could only reach out to users via messages to the users’ inboxes, and anytime a wall post was made, there wasn’t any sort of notification. By integrating a stream directly into the wall, it enables events to have more of a conversation before, during, and after an event. While it may not be a complete redesign of the Facebook Events product, it is a significant upgrade.

Despite Facebook refraining from publicly announcing the product roadmap for events, my guess is that the functionality (and design) will slowly begin to mimic Facebook Pages. The idea is that Facebook is becoming a platform which enables users to socialize around various objects: events, pages, groups, photos, videos, applications, and friends. How this socialization takes place is relatively consistent from product to product.

Whether it’s a wall with comments and likes, or tabs that provide extended functionality, Facebook is aiming to be the product which enables anybody to instantly socialize anything. It’s a broad vision but it’s pretty clear that the products are all evolving in this direction, with this upgrade being one step along the path. We’ve reached out to Facebook for confirmation about the event integration with the stream and will be sure to update when we hear more.

Thanks to Mari Smith for the tip.

Update
Facebook has told us that no information will be published to the stream currently.

Facebook Event Wall Publisher

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12 Comments »

Thanks for the props, Nick!! This was definitely a welcome surprise as I'm right in the midst of helping promote a large social media event. The ability to @ tag, comment/like posts, and have content thumbnails show up on the Event wall totally rocks.

Comment by Mari Smith — March 29, 2010 @ 11:31 pm

Dubai money…im so paid

Comment by Bob Alash — March 29, 2010 @ 11:40 pm

Agreed this is a huge feature, especially since the ability for an admin of an event created via a page has long since lost the ability to message it's attendees.

Comment by Chad Estes — March 30, 2010 @ 12:06 am

Awesome! Thanks for the tip on the added features. Now its time to use them!

Comment by Cory Shanes — March 30, 2010 @ 12:42 am

This is fabulous news – very welcome. Being an event admin has been the solution for one client – but can be problematic in how you can reach/message your event invitees. Can't wait to see this and more roll out on events!

Comment by Kathy Cook Colaiacov — March 30, 2010 @ 4:29 am

But when are they going to let a Facebook Fan Page RSVP to an event? As a business who has a page on Facebook, we participate in events that are promoted on Facebook, but currently we can't say that we are attending an event as "Our Company" is has to be as our personal profile, very frustrating!

Comment by Greg Lawrence — March 30, 2010 @ 7:42 am

This is a really great upgrade. Very pleased and cannot wait to try it out! Thanks, Nick!

Comment by Michele Lorito-Chase — March 31, 2010 @ 7:23 am

The problem is you can no longer readily see the media associated with the event. You have to manually click "See All Photos", "See All Videos", or "See All Links" which now appear below the list of RSVPs (whereas it used to be above). I know FB Groups sort of went the same way, but at least they added prominent tabs at the TOP of the page instead of tiny text links that anyone can now overlook.

Comment by Randall Krause — April 1, 2010 @ 8:27 am

Wonderful to see great improvements on facebook, with all the new streaming, tagging, grouping, and events now showing up. Wow, I will take advantage. Another great thing for us to tell our folowers, tribes, teams, groups and fans. LoL, Social loco.

Joseph Romero

The Social Media Evangelist

Comment by Joseph Romero — April 1, 2010 @ 10:59 am

a big drawback to the new version of the events page is you can no longer access all past wall posts. in such an event where attendees are bringing a food item for potluck, no one can scroll back to see what is already being covered. its now one page, and that can be covered over quickly with most attendees missing any wall posted updates. perhaps a glich.

Comment by Gordon Steadman — June 23, 2010 @ 1:40 am

The new version no longer shows a list of past events, so people can't look in one place to see what kind of things our organization has done. Why did they take this off? Now the only way to see past events is to search down through all the wall posts. This is a big problem for us!

Comment by cmNhu — February 22, 2011 @ 10:19 am

Hi Gordon, this is a while back…

But due to a facebook event in honor of a friend passing I will still say something about your comment. You said something which is very important and finally ended my search for the reason my post seemed to have "disappeared" from that event – and other posts, too.
At first I was SO upset, that I thought the person who created the event might have deleted my post – due to the fact that I had renounced my position as admin on a peer-support-page (had an argument with pageowner). And this was the page where I met my friend who died yesterday morning.
So – it is not a glitch but – as missunderstandings easily happen when posts "disappear" – in my opinion it is a stupid feature that facebook needs to change.
And I will complain to them.

And thankyou very much for posting this as it cleared up a great big missunderstanding
kind regards
Catherine