Skip to main content

Event notifications are Facebook’s latest attempt to be Twitter, and they’re coming soon

Facebook is testing a new feature that provides notifications when certain live events happen. And this feature represents another attempt to turn Facebook into a destination for real-time digital chatter — it’s another step towards the Twitterfication of Facebook.

BuzzFeed reports that Facebook sent a notification to users who followed David Beckham notifying them of a live question-and-answer session on the website, and a Facebook user named Roxanna Marquez pointed it out by capturing a screenshot of her event notification (interestingly enough, she posted it on Twitter).

Recommended Videos

Facebook responded saying the notification is part of an ongoing project “testing various notification types to help people discover content that might be relevant to them.” 

The social network noted that only users who “liked” Beckham received the notification. If you’re a fan of a celebrity with an active Facebook presence, you may see a similar notification in coming weeks for events with celebrities, as Facebook tries to carve out its place as a digital space for live events and the accompanying digital chatter. 

These new real-time event notifications are an attempt on Facebook’s part to encourage users to participate in conversations about stuff that’s happening at the moment. And the Beckham session scored a decent turnout for this first experiment. Whether or not they showed up because of the notification or because they found out another way, over 4,000 people participated in the question-and-answer comments, and over 18,000 “liked” the post.

 

That’s a strong showing for an event like this — but it doesn’t mean that these notifications will consistently lure social media users onto Facebook during big events. People were happy with it:

 

David Beckham is the rare celebrity with an active Facebook page but without a Twitter account, so Facebook events like this are rare chances for fans to post questions directly to the star soccer player/ridiculously handsome man, which may have increased enthusiasm here. If Beckham had a Twitter account and regularly interacted with fans, this event still might have drawn the same crowd, but it’s very likely the bulk of Beckham’s day-to-day fan interaction would take place on Twitter. For famous people that have both Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, like Miley Cyrus or the Kardashians, most of their digital interactions fans still happen on Twitter.

Facebook has been making efforts to woo celebrities, so if it can convince more famous people to eschew Twitter in favor of Facebook like Beckham has, it could boost its power as a place people come to try to casually communicate with celebrities online. But for now, despite this experiment, Twitter is still the best place to do that, and it will remain so unless Facebook situates back-and-forth public interactions in a better place on the site. 

When you tweet at someone, it goes into their feed, but it doesn’t stick to their public profile in the same way a Facebook wall post does. Wall posts feel more formal, less conversational, and more like a message. Responding to a post someone made on your Facebook wall feels like replying to a message, while tweeting back at someone feels more rapid-fire and casual, like you’re talking, not writing. Twitter’s format favors real-time dialogue and Facebook’s does not, and no matter how many event notifications Facebook pushes at us or how many times they try to make hashtags happen, unless a formatting change that makes the site more suited to real-time talk happens, Twitter will still dominate that arena. 

Kate Knibbs
Former Contributor
Kate Knibbs is a writer from Chicago. She is very happy that her borderline-unhealthy Internet habits are rewarded with a…
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Reddit just achieved something for the first time in its 20-year history
The Reddit logo.

Reddit’s on a roll. The social media platform has just turned a profit for the first time in its 20-year history, and now boasts a record 97.2 million daily active users, marking a year-over-year increase of 47%. A few times during the quarter, the figure topped 100 million, which Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders had been a “long-standing milestone” for the site.

The company, which went public in March, announced the news in its third-quarter earnings results on Tuesday.

Read more
Worried about the TikTok ban? This is how it might look on your phone
TikTok splash screen on an Android phone.

The US Supreme Court has decided to uphold a law that would see TikTok banned in the country on January 19. Now, the platform has issued an official statement, confirming that it will indeed shut down unless it gets some emergency relief from the outgoing president.

“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” said the company soon after the court’s verdict.
So, what does going dark mean?
So, far, there is no official statement on what exactly TikTok means by “going dark.” There is a lot of speculation out there on how exactly the app or website will look once TikTok shutters in the US.

Read more