In 2014, Facebook Events presented a great opportunity. It was one of the most active surfaces of the platform without substantial product and design investment.
As product design lead (2015→2016), I and the team split Events to 2 products: a focused social product for personal events, and a flexible platform for public events.
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Design Team Kevin Schaefer John Kumahara Patrick Keenan
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Events was one of the unsuspected success stories on Facebook. In 2014, it captured a generous portion of Facebook's engagement metrics without significant investment beyond maintenance and cosmetic updates.
Not much had changed since 2011
Over time, use cases for Events grew beyond house parties. Festivals, concerts, online events, art shows, and protests made the bulk of events and invites, effectively diluting the core use case.
Invitations to Facebook Events guaranteed direct communication with users on Facebook without the limits of Messenger or Newsfeed. Events were getting abused as a spam distribution mechanism and were rife with memes.
Public and Private Events called for distinct content, invites, and connection models (e.g. going / not going). However, Facebook products are designed as generic platforms to aggregate as many users as possible and expose them to advertisers on Newsfeed.
The argument was won by demonstrating:
