Facebook Adding Features to Help You Discover, Interact with Local Businesses

Facebook wants your friends to help you discover new things to do and places to see. The social network has added new features that help friends recommend stuff.

“People come to Facebook every day to connect and share experiences with friends and family,” Facebook says. “We share the great places we go and we ask our friends for advice when we need help getting things done.”

A new feature is Recommendations.

When you write a Facebook post looking for advice on local places or services, you’ll have the option to turn on Recommendations for that post. If you turn on the feature, your friends can comment on your post with suggestions, and you’ll see all of them mapped out and saved in one place. You can also go to your Recommendations bookmark on Facebook to ask a new question or help your friends.

Facebook also revamped how events work. A redesigned Events bookmark will be rolled out in the “coming weeks.”

Finally, Facebook is working to better connect people to local businesses. For example, you can now order food from restaurants directly from their Facebook Pages. And for local businesses that require you to book an appointment, such as spas and salons, you can now request a time via the business’ Facebook Page and view their entire slate of services and offerings.

“This is the first step, and over the coming months we’ll be launching even more new features that will make it easier to get things done, make confident decisions and communicate directly with businesses on your time and terms,” Facebook says.