The Facebook Blog

As the summer heat rises in the northern hemisphere, the great outdoors beckons families for fun. Reunion season is at its prime as clans come together for barbecues, brunches and bashes. These days, more and more families are finding Facebook to be a convenient tool for coordinating their festivities.

Reunion Planning Goes Paperless

For Crystal Graham Bell of Raleigh, N.C., the logistics of planning her family's bi-annual reunion have always been difficult. With extended kin up and down the East Coast of the U.S., communicating decisions and plans was time consuming and pricey.

So this year she had an ultimatum for the family: "We're doing everything on online this year—no more snail mail!" Crystal proclaimed.

Crystal used the Facebook Events application to share details with her family about this year's summer reunion she's planning for July in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The event has become a central resource where guests can RSVP and find information about the location, accommodations and even a link to the family's full reunion website.



Because Facebook Event administrators are able to send messages to all guests at once, Crystal also has found it easy to update everyone at once and to stay organized.

Reaching the Younger Generation

When Trina Williams created a group on Facebook for her family, she loved the enthusiasm she saw as several of her younger relatives quickly joined. Now 50 members strong, Trina's group allows the Williams family to share photos, memories and announcements in between their formal reunions.

"It seems like everyone is enjoying the group, putting out pictures and connecting now and then," said Trina of Lithonia, Ga. "We've even had relatives we've never met before join the group!"

In preparation for the family's summer 2011 reunion in Atlanta, Trina posted the reunion details to the group's Events tab so that all members could easily make plans to attend and RSVP.

Inspiring Family Elders

Inspired with what a helpful tool Facebook was in planning her high school reunion, Rita Chavez Perez of Torrance, Calif., decided to give it a try for her family's next big bash. She was overjoyed at the response from family when she created a Facebook event and invited 50 relatives.

The invitation spurred many of her elder family members—in their 60s and 70s—to get on Facebook, too.

"They're in love with Facebook now," Rita explained. "It helps everyone keep in touch. Nowadays, we can contact our great aunts and uncles to say, 'Hey! Let's grab lunch!'"

A Reunion Every Day

Growing up, my family always came together around activities like Caribbean food and salsa dancing. Now that we're scattered in different places—my parents in New Jersey, my cousins living in Alabama and New York, and me in California—we come together most frequently around Facebook.

My little sister, Mariel, constantly makes me laugh by posting videos to my profile Wall.



After my parents filled out their anniversary on their profiles, I remembered to call them when the date arrived in February. When my grandmother renovated her house 2,500 miles away in Largo, Fla., I was able to view all of the hard work she put into it through photos she posted on Facebook.

Reunions don't always have to be formal or planned. My family and I take comfort in knowing that on Facebook, we're always together as a family.


Melody, a specialist on Facebook's user operations team, loves viewing old family photos on Facebook.

Some events in life are spontaneous—such as catching a movie, meeting a friend for dinner or taking an impromptu day trip. So today, we're making it easier to let your friends know about those last-minute plans in our new version of Facebook Events.

You can now create an event directly from the "Events" box on your home page with one step. Just start typing your event into the "What are you planning?" field on the right-hand column of your home page. A form will open. Add a time and place, and you'll be ready to share your plans with your... friends.



You can also create events by going to your Events dashboard in the left-hand menu. Once you're there, click the "+Create an Event" button and fill out each field. This more-detailed creation form is useful for more formal events or those you're planning further in advance.



With this update to Facebook Events, we've streamlined the number of options to make it faster and simpler to share your plans. For example, for all events you create, the people you invite will be able to post messages, photos, videos and links on the event's Wall.

You can also choose between two types of events: a public event, available for anyone to RSVP and attend, and a private event. Private events will only be visible to people who have been invited, and only invited people can see the event in their News Feed.

Events created before this launch will maintain all of their settings. Going forward, all new events you create will follow this new format.


Devin Naquin, a Facebook engineer, is planning to go skydiving this weekend.

The most important part of organizing any event is making sure you invite the right people. For example, if you're planning a birthday party, you might want to invite the same friends who went to a fun BBQ the weekend before. To enable this, we recently added the ability to invite friends to an event based on who was invited to past events you've attended.

This new feature of Facebook Events works by allowing you to filter your friends by recent events. When inviting friends to a new Facebook event, click on the tab labeled "Filter Friends" in... the upper-left corner. The drop-down menu will display the five most recent events you either created or attended in the past month.



When you click on one of these events, you will see all of your friends that were invited to that event, regardless of whether they actually attended. Keep in mind that only your confirmed friends with will appear in this selection. If 50 people were invited to last weekend's BBQ but you are only Facebook friends with 20 of them, you will only see those 20 people.

From this selection, you can invite people individually or click "Select All." Then select "Send Invitations" at the bottom of the field.

With this new filter, we hope you will be able to organize even more events and invite the best mix of people.


Brynn Shepherd, a product design intern from the University of Pennsylvania, is excited that the feature she built this summer is now live.

When I want to grab lunch with friends, I usually update my status to see who's around by asking, "Who wants to go out for lunch at 12:30 p.m.?" Another option is to use the Facebook Events application to share extra details like where and when to meet, directions and maybe even a photo. There wasn't an easy way, though, to plan a more spontaneous get-together while also offering more details.

We're now offering a streamlined way to create events directly through the Publisher that combine the best of both of these approaches.

From the... Publisher, you can create an event in one simple step. After clicking on the "Events" icon, you can enter information about what the event is and where and when you want to meet.



You can invite friends directly from the Feed story that's created either on your Profile or your News Feed, Just select the "Invite guests" link to share the event with friends.



You might wonder why you wouldn't just invite friends to an event using a status update. Creating an event in the Publisher helps you better organize the event details, and your friends can RSVP immediately when they see it in their News Feeds. This is more structured than a status update and also takes full advantage of the Events application. You can easily find out which of your friends are coming, and of course, they can comment on the event's wall, share photos and use other Events features.

Keep in mind that when you create an event through the Publisher, it will always make the event open for guests. Anyone will be able to join and invite others to join. You can always further edit your event from the application to add more information or to change access to closed or secret.


Bo, a software engineering intern, is creating an event for his next basketball game.