Diagnose Why Facebook Events Lost Momentum and Plan Its Revival

You are a product manager at Meta, and leadership has asked you to turn around Facebook Events, the feature people, groups and businesses use to create events, invite guests, collect RSVPs and discover things to do nearby. Treat Events as a product that has lost momentum. Explain how you would work out what is going wrong, which users and problems you would focus on, what you would build or change, and how you would know the turnaround is working. ```hint Find where the event chain breaks An event only succeeds if a host creates it, the right guests see it, they respond, and they actually show up. Work out which link in that chain is weakest, and for which kind of event, before you choose features. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - What does losing momentum mean here: fewer events created, fewer responses per event, lower attendance, or Events losing relevance with younger users? - Which events are in scope: personal gatherings such as birthday parties, events run by Facebook Groups, public events from businesses and venues, online events, or all of them? - Is the goal purely user engagement with Events, or should the strategy also grow revenue from businesses promoting their events? - May the solution extend beyond the Facebook app into Messenger, Instagram or ticketing partners? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A diagnosis of why Events lost ground that considers substitutes such as group chats and ticketing sites and shifts in Facebook's user base, with the data that would confirm it. - A deliberate choice of segment among hosts, guests and event types, with reasons tied to where Facebook still has an advantage. - A short list of prioritized solutions aimed at the diagnosed failure point, rather than an unranked feature brainstorm. - A success metric that reflects real attendance, with guardrails against spam, notification fatigue, privacy problems and safety risks at public events. - Sequencing, risks and how the first bets would be tested. ### Follow-up Questions - Your data shows events are being created as often as before, but fewer guests respond to invitations. How does your strategy change? - How would you test an Events change fairly when a host and their guests may land in different experiment groups? - Should Meta build its own ticketing for public events or partner with ticketing companies? Defend your choice. - Suppose leadership skips the turnaround framing and asks you to define the next major version of Events from scratch. How would you set its goal, decide whom to serve first, choose and order the features, and define success, and what would change from your turnaround plan?