Facebook To Offer Suggestions For Local Events Via City Guides

Facebook is reportedly testing a new feature for its City Guides in which the social media company will offer up suggestions for attractions, restaurants and events, among other things.

According to an unsourced report, Facebook is aiming to take on TripAdvisor by embedding social aspects into its new feature, which will show friends who visited the city and what they did when they were there. The feature was first spotted in December but is now available to a wider audience, noted the report.

This isn’t the only initiative Facebook is focusing on in 2017. In Facebook’s recent earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg named video a mega-trend on par with mobile, saying the social media company would continue investing and developing new video experiences in the future. Now, consumers are getting a hint of what that future might look like.

In a recent blog post, Facebook announced its latest offering: an upcoming TV-streaming app. Initially available on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TVs, the app will beam Facebook’s on-site video content to users’ televisions.

“With the app, you can watch videos shared by friends or pages you follow, top live videos from around the world and recommended videos based on your interests,” Facebook said in a company blog post. “You can also catch up on videos you’ve saved to watch later, as well as revisit videos you’ve watched, shared or uploaded.”

Facebook brought in $8.81 billion in revenue and $1.41 earnings per share in Q4, mostly from ads. And that’s just the beginning. The future of Facebook is going to be video (and with that comes online TV ad dollars). By 2020, the online TV ad market is expected to grow to more than $16 billion — up from $9.8 billion in 2016, according to eMarketer — and Facebook wants to grab as big a piece of that as it can.