Facebook’s Events app, which never really took off, has been renamed Facebook Local and will help users discover bars, restaurants and nearby attractions in addition to events, TechCrunch reported.
Launching in the US, the app is said to use Facebook’s 70 million business pages and combines them with reviews and check-ins to surface relevant content.
Facebook Local product manager Aditya Koolwal told TechCrunch the new app makes it “a lot easier to do certain kind of look-ups that are very common when making plans with friends.” Advertising in the app may come “way further down the line”, he added.
The original app, which debuted last year, ranked around 139 on social networking app charts, and SensorTower estimates it only saw 100,000 downloads.
TechCrunch said the Events app was “buggy” and “redundant with the main Facebook app’s event feature”. The new one has the potential to become “a legitimate alternative to Yelp or Foursquare”.
Comments