Facebook’s events App is no longer limited to events, in its new avatar it has gone “Local”. This essentially means that the erstwhile Facebook events App, which has now made a comeback in a new form, can find events, businesses, everything local, and relevant for you. This App is targeted to be your local guide to all things local.

With the Facebook Events App, you are no longer alone

If you are visiting a new place, and looking for something to do, you may want to make use of this updated Events App renamed as “Facebook local“. Available only in US for now, this local App provides you information on restaurants, bars, events, businesses within and around your location.

To Facebook’s advantage, the rich database of members is the default starting point for obtaining recommendations, suggestions on local events, businesses, etc. A recommendation regarding a particular event or a local business from your friend is certainly going to be more valuable to you than any third party feedback. With the events App never quite making it on top of the popularity chart, this makeover may give it the popularity boost that Facebook is looking for.

Should this local App from Best practices for Optimizing Facebook posts become immensely popular, quite a few of the popular local apps, such as Yelp, Foursquare, may face stiff competition.

What should businesses do to make the most of Facebook local?

One of the keys things for businesses, who have Facebook pages, is to continue to keep the pages current. This is a huge opportunity for local businesses to promote their products, events, special promotions, sales, etc so that they are reachable from the App.

Currently the App does not serve Ads, we have to wait and see if that happens anytime soon.

I would love to hear your experience of using the new improved Events App from Facebook.