Facebook looks to be partnering with event marketplace Eventbrite, a move may have been foreshadowed by recent design changes on the site. The announcement of a partnership was first noticed by a Facebook user who sent in a screenshot to TechCrunch this morning.
Facebook’s recent redesign has showed a much more public events page, a feature that would go along with selling tickets to events quite perfectly.
The text of the announcement, which was hosted at facebook.eventbrite.com but has since been removed, read as follows:
Collect money for your event with Eventbrite
Eventbrite is partnering with Facebook to enable you to collect money for your event. Your attendees pay with credit card and Eventbrite collects the money on your behalf and sends you a check when your event is over. We charge a small service fee for every ticket sold. 5.5% + $.99c, which attendees pay, costing you nothing.
Eventbrite has helped event organizers around the world sell over 10 million tickets. We’re excited to help you sell yours and put some delightful cash in your pocket.
Until recently, the Facebook events page was primarily focused on one thing – the events you had specifically been invited to. That’s no longer the case. Now, clicking on the “Events” link in the left column brings you to a page that lists not only all the events you’re invited to, but any public events that any of your friends are attending.
This seems like a definite shift in focus toward becoming more of a go-to place for finding what’s going on around you instead of just keeping track of invites. And if companies can get in on the game and start offering events that users can purchase tickets for through Facebook, then we’re talking.
Eventbrite had already made it easy for its users to share events they created on the Eventbrite website on Facebook. This announcement would not only be sharing events, but allowing Facebook users to buy tickets through the site.
Update: We heard back from Facebook and this is what they had to say on the supposed deal:
EventBrite is currently testing a Connect implementation. We don’t have anything more to share at this time.
