I live 1000 miles away; I don’t think I’ll make it to your Facebook Event..
I’m very fortunate to have friends in The Arts. Even more fortunately, these friends are actually performing, and frequently. This has left me with an abundance of Facebook invites to a wide variety of plays, art gallery openings, improv showcases and concerts, most of which I am geographically incapable of attending. This gets compounded when several friends are collaborating on a single project, and I get an invite or two from each participant.
I’m torn. I really enjoy keeping up with the artistic careers of my friends, but I really hate dealing with invites to events I could never attend. I don’t think any of my friends are intentionally trying to invite me to events they know I can’t attend. Rather, I think in their excitement for the event, they literally invite ‘everyone they know.’ It’s certainly the easiest way to get the word out. But it’s probably not the best thing for your ‘friendships.’ I think I have a solution: Facebook Friend Lists.
Friend lists have been around forever in Facebook, but I don’t think many people take advantage of them. I think they’re great. They definitely can help solve the problem of inviting too many people to your events.
Setting up lists are easy: go to the friends page and click “Edit Friends.” At the top you’ll find a button to create a friends list. Click that and give your list a name. I named mine “People who realistically might attend my events.” That name turns out to be too long, and gets truncated. Might I suggest “Realistic Invites” instead? Start typing names into the box, and your friends will be added. I recommend setting up several groups, Family, Friends, College, High School, etc. They come in handy for limiting access to your profile, too.
Then, when you create an event, you can just choose that list of people who realistically might attend your event. Problem solved.
Of course, I still want to keep tabs on my friends’ artistic endeavors. Making the event public should allow the event to appear in your feed, and I’ll see it that way. Everyone wins.
