Facebook Events May Soon Let You Invite Non-Members

Shocker: not everyone is on Facebook. That can create frustration for people trying to organize events via the social network.

Soon, Facebook Events may be more shareable to non-members. Events hosts could send an invite by entering a non-Facebook user’s email address and the invitee could RSVP without having to create a Facebook account.

“One thing we’ve heard from feedback, especially from emerging markets, when users are creating events is that they can’t invite all their friends because not all of them use Facebook,” Facebook Event product manager Aditya Koolwal told Mashable.

While this service may not help Facebook add to its userbase of 1.44 billion, it would allow for continued engagement and improve user experience with the Events service. Currently, Facebook events that are made public can be viewed by non-users but doesn’t allow action, and private events are inaccessible.

This feature is one of several updates Koolwal said. Koolwal did not disclose when users could expect these updates. Despite the demand from users to increase shareability outside Facebook, Koolwal said his team has yet to explicitly test those solutions.

Other future updates includes invitation receipt notifications, whereby a host could see if a guest has viewed an invitation. Additionally, Facebook users can expect to see more events in their News Feed as well as a list of ‘Related Events’ similar to how users see Related News Stories under a shared link on mobile.