Last year, Facebook introduced Events — a standalone app that combined a dedicated calendar with happenings around the city. The app wasn’t a hit — it dropped out of the most-downloaded iOS apps a few days after launching, according to knowledge from marketing research firm App Annie, and ne’er came back.
Today Facebook is attempting again. From currently on, the app formerly referred to as Events can currently be known as local, and can incorporate info about local businesses and reviews from Facebook users. “The new app, Facebook local, helps you simply find what to do, wherever to travel, wherever to eat, or what you wish — all suggested by the folks you know and trust,” Aditya Koolwal, the product manager, said during a statement.
Most of this info is already within the Facebook app that’s likely already on your phone. I’m still a bit unclear on why local has to exist as a standalone app — other than the actual fact that the flagship Facebook app is so choked with options that almost all of what’s within local rarely if ever surfaces. the most interesting aspect of local, at least to me, continues to be its combination of calendar and event listings. It might turn Facebook into a powerful seller of tickets, ought to it choose to pursue that path. within the in the meantime, it’s a step nearer to Foursquare and Yelp.
Local is now available on
IBM’s processor pushes quantum computing closer to ‘supremacy’
