Many of Facebook’s more than 1 billion monthly active users would agree — the site is great, but could use some improvement. As users complain about ads, a cluttered and confusing interface, and several other things, there are a few things that Facebook could implement to make the site much more palatable. Here are five innovations (some possible, some rather imaginative) that we think would improve Facebook.
Lisa Raphael (left), the social media producer at Katie Couric's daytime talk show Katie, is one of our featured speakers in Mediabistro's upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, an online event and workshop starting June 6, 2013. Lisa will share a case study on how the hit show uses Twitter to build interest and buzz around upcoming segments. Learn more about our our twelve event speakers and register here. 
Facebook rolled out an update for its iOS application Monday, mainly featuring quicker loading times for events and the ability for users to save photos from the social network onto their devices.
Wondering what to do this weekend and want to see where the hotspots are in your city? HugeCity mines Facebook’s public event data to bring it all together. Now HugeCity has an iOS application, as well as a fresh look for its website.
Say you’re planning a big trip to New York. You want to get in touch with friends to go to a movie or a concert while you’re in the Big Apple, but can’t remember exactly which of your Facebook friends lives there. Ribbon, a recently launched iOS application, makes it easy to find friends in faraway cities.
At this moment, you probably have dozens of Facebook event invitations — birthday parties, reunions, concerts, poetry readings, and the random “I have a new phone and need your numbers” request. Calendo, an iPhone app that launched Wednesday, sorts through these events (as well as others in your area) to recommend only the best ones. In beta, those who used Calendo went to twice as many events.
Local businesses are thriving on Facebook, according to statistics released Friday by Dan Levy, director of small business at the social network, who said more than 2 billion connections exist on Facebook between users and local businesses, adding that approximately 70 percent of monthly active users in the U.S. and Canada are connected to local businesses.
Tired of event invites from friends you haven’t talked to in three years who live across the country? There’s a way to fix that, without having the awkward conversation asking them to stop inviting you. Facebook recently made it harder for event administrators to invite large swaths of friends — a move that social media expert Mari Smith said might have been an attempt to combat the problem of unwanted event invites. But there’s a way to block invites based on who is sending them.
Facebook users who manage events with hundreds of people involved (or who simply invite their entire friend lists) will start meeting some friction. As noticed by an AllFacebook reader and by social media expert Mari Smith, Facebook is restricting invitations on events. Now, users can only invite 100 users at a time, and there can only be 300 pending invitations on events.
Some Facebook users are seeing friend requests that they have not yet responded to appear in the notifications area of their News Feeds, right under birthdays and events.
Facebook is working to correct a pair of bugs, with one affecting users’ ability to display events they are attending on their Timelines, and the other preventing them from viewing their search histories on the social network. UPDATE: The bug affecting search histories has been corrected, according to Facebook.
