Facebook is testing Buy Tickets button for events

Trust Facebook to come up with features you would never expect of them. It looks like the social networking giant is experimenting with a ‘buy tickets’ button for its pet Events tab. Don’t get too excited yet. It looks like this option is available for events only in Israel and the Netherlands yet.

All Facebook reported the appearance of the ‘buy tickets’ button on certain event pages across the website. Not surprisingly, this button merely redirects you to a third-party website where the actual action of buying the ticket would take place.

The 'buy ticket' button looks intriguing

Event creators and hosts now have the ability to add a ‘buy tickets’ link directly into their pages while creating it. It does seem like a small scale testing right now though with this facility being available only in the geographical location of Israel and the Netherlands.

A company representative confirmed to CNET that the ‘buy tickets’ button was indeed being rolled out but downplayed the feature by saying that it merely replaced the previous bit.ly. The earlier option would pack off users to a third party website, the event creator’s preferred ticketing partner, in order to help them book event tickets.

But it does look like Facebook has high hopes from this feature. The source code shows that the ‘buy tickets’ link is not just a custom one but is actually a dedicated field that Facebook has created. Currently Facebook is may be sending users across to third party ticketing websites, but it could only be a matter of time before Facebook decides to take a plunge and integrate ticketing more deeply into its site.

The code used by Facebook (Image Credits: The Next Web)

Of course, hosting third party ticketing websites on Facebook could be a great way for them to make money. Some users have already started to find ‘buy tickets’ buttons on their timelines after having shared an event, making it obvious that Facebook could possibly be making advertising money off this feature, quite like sponsored stories and sponsored pages.

We’ve come to expect Facebook to experiment with changing the face of the website every few days now and buying tickets on Facebook is something many users may not be too surprised to find. Only recently a report revealed that Facebook could be experimenting with ways to customise content on your news feed based on your likes.

Available in the Netherlands too (Image Credits: The Next Web)

Facebook is reportedly testing a new option for the news feed, which will enable subjects of the pages users may have "liked" previously to appear under a new section: "Recent Articles about". So based on the pages that users may have "liked" in the past, the news feed will vary with content that is useful, or be clogged with even more random data.

The news feed already has a Trending Articles option. However, there is quite a difference between Articles Related to and Trending Articles. The latter comprises of articles that have been gaining interest and can be about anything. Articles Related to, on the other hand, are topics that a user has already expressed an interest in.