Los Angeles — In a move that was baking for a long time, social networking outfit Facebook has finally unveiled a revamped Events feature Wednesday, complete with two equally useful ways to organize all of your date-specific happenings on the site — a new Calendar view.
The Menlo Park company announced in a Facebook note, stating that what originated as a hackathon project has led to the social network’s new-fangled Events page design.
Beginning today, Facebook is unwrapping its redesigned Events page, which is also bundled with Calendar and List views. Along with the new Calendar view, which uses your friends’ profile pictures to display their birthdays, parties, RSVPs, and all other events up to several months in advance of the current date. Also, the Events feature includes a redesigned List view, which makes it easier to respond without going into its page.
Facebook announced Wednesday it has revamped its Events feature, adding a calendar view. (Credit: Facebook)
In a blog post, Facebook Software Engineer Bob Baldwin, who pioneered the project and formulated the homepage Events during early stages of hackathon, yesterday wrote that the social networking firm’s new Events design was fashioned to make it easier for users to coordinate their events, make plans, and see their friends’ birthdays. It would highlight upcoming events so that users can plan in advance.
“Before a recent hackathon, a few of us devised a Facebook group called ‘Social Calendar Dreamers’ to spark discussion around making Events more visual,” Baldwin wrote in a blog post today. “By the time next hackathon arrived, engineers from the events, photos, messages, and other teams hacked through the night to build a better way to view events. By 6 a.m., we had a mock-up that worked.”
Tinkering with the new features, what users will now see when they click on “Calendar” on the top left of the Events dashboard is a List and Calendar view. The new calendar view arranges all of your upcoming events, birthdays, and suggested events in easy to navigate grids. The List view displays day-to-day events that users have been invited to, along with Suggested Events. Users can scroll through the Events and respond to invites without leaving the page. The Calendar view shows events laid out in a grid calendar with events, birthdays, and RSVPs listed in each day’s box.
“We unveiled a new list and calendar view that makes it easier to scan upcoming birthdays, invites and suggested events. Scroll through these events and respond to invites without leaving the page,” Baldwin said.
“Suggested events are recommended to you based on your friends, Pages you like, places you have checked in at and the apps you use on Facebook,” he added.
In order to toggle between the two views, two new buttons are embedded at the top left of the page that users can use to switch.
Among other things new to the Events feature is a change to its icon that will now make it display that day’s date as opposed to a static “31.” This ever-changing date on Events’ icon is similar to Apple’s iCal, which also shows each day’s date.
“A couple of us felt there should be a better way for people to see their friends’ birthdays a few days in advance and make plans for the weekend,” said Baldwin, who wrote the note. “So we built it.”
Another nifty feature this release boasts of is hovering over any aspect of the calendar will trigger a detailed pop up, where you can join, decline, or navigate toward the event’s page.
When hovering over a square opens up the events and birthdays of the day. From the top of the calendar view you can create an event, change the date, or even export your events to iCal, Outlook, or Google Calendar.
Going forward, this new Events feature is the second big announcement by Facebook that comes on the heels of Google Plus’ redesigned Events page on Wednesday. Google rolled out its new Events page last month, which includes scheduling, RSVP status, and photo sharing.