How Eventbrite Recommends Events Based on Your Social Network
A system that suggests events to you by analyzing your social media connections and your past attendance history to see what your friends are doing.
Original patent title: “Social event recommendations”
A system that suggests events to you by analyzing your social media connections and your past attendance history to see what your friends are doing. Granted to Eventbrite Inc in 2014 with 20 claims and 51 forward citations.
Key facts
Coverage
What does this patent actually cover?
This patent describes a method for an event management system to suggest events to a user by pulling data from an external social network. It creates an internal map of the user's connections and looks at their event history to score how important those connections are. The system then ranks available events by combining this social data with specific event details like cost, location, and type. For example, if three of your close friends are attending a concert, the system uses this patent's logic to rank that concert higher on your personalized recommendation list.
The gap
What does this patent NOT cover?
- Does not cover recommendations based solely on a user's own past behavior without considering social network data.
- Does not cover systems that recommend events based on global popularity or trending lists rather than specific social connections.
- Does not cover the actual mechanism of how a third-party social network stores or manages its own social graph data.
- Does not cover offline or non-digital methods of event discovery or social networking.
These exclusions are unique to PatentBrief — derived from the actual claim language, not patent-office boilerplate.
What made this novel
The system doesn't just look at whether a friend is attending an event; it calculates a weighted score for the 'friend connection' itself, factoring in how often the two users have attended events together in the past.
Schematic visualization of the patent's claim structure. Hand-drawn diagrams in progress for each landmark patent.
Where you've seen this
Real-world examples
Eventbrite's personalized event discovery feed
Facebook Events recommendations
Meetup's social-based event suggestions
Why it matters
The bigger picture
This patent represents the shift toward social discovery in the early 2010s, where platforms moved from static listings to personalized feeds. It reflects the industry-wide effort to increase event attendance by leveraging the 'fear of missing out' (FOMO) through social validation. By formalizing how social graphs influence event discovery, it helped companies like Eventbrite integrate directly with platforms like Facebook to drive ticket sales.
Filed
November 29, 2010
Granted
April 15, 2014
Market context
Who's building on this
Companies in this space
Eventbrite remains the primary entity utilizing these methods, but the technology is now standard practice for major platforms like Meta (Facebook) and various event-ticketing startups that integrate with social APIs to improve conversion rates.
Market impact
This patent helped solidify the standard for social-integrated ticketing platforms. It shifted the competitive landscape from simple search-based event directories to personalized, social-aware recommendation engines, which are now a baseline requirement for any major event-ticketing service.
Claim 1 — Plain English
What this patent covers
This patent describes a method for an event management system to suggest events to a user by pulling data from an external social network. It creates an internal map of the user's connections and looks at their event history to score how important those connections are. The system then ranks available events by combining this social data with specific event details like cost, location, and type. For example, if three of your close friends are attending a concert, the system uses this patent's logic to rank that concert higher on your personalized recommendation list.
The clever bit
The system doesn't just look at whether a friend is attending an event; it calculates a weighted score for the 'friend connection' itself, factoring in how often the two users have attended events together in the past.
What it does not cover
- Does not cover recommendations based solely on a user's own past behavior without considering social network data.
- Does not cover systems that recommend events based on global popularity or trending lists rather than specific social connections.
- Does not cover the actual mechanism of how a third-party social network stores or manages its own social graph data.
- Does not cover offline or non-digital methods of event discovery or social networking.
Patent timeline
Application submitted to the patent office
Application published, typically 18 months after filing
Patent officially issued
PatentBrief Score
Impact Score
Moderate
Citation count
34/40
Highly cited
Claim breadth
13/20
Broad claimsclaimsThe numbered statements at the end of a patent that legally define what the inventor owns.Read more →
Recency
5/20
Granted 10–20 years ago
Assignee scale
0/20
Independent or smaller assigneeassigneeThe entity that owns the patent — usually the inventor's employer or a company.Read more →
PatentBrief Impact Score — based on citation count, claim breadth, recency, and assignee scale. Not a legal assessment.
Heuristic Value Estimate
What this patent might be worth
$328K – $1.0M
Midpoint $655K · 4.5 yr remaining · industry ×1.6
Heuristic only — blends forward/backward citation counts, claim scope, time remaining, litigation history, and CPC-derived industry baseline. Real valuations need a professional appraisal.
The original legal language
Original claims
20 claims as filed with the patent office.
Concepts involved
Citations
Patent lineage
Cite this patent
Groesbeck, L. O., & Zambrano, B. R. (2014). How Eventbrite Recommends Events Based on Your Social Network (U.S. Patent No. 8,700,540). U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/8700540/facebook-messenger
Auto-generated from the patent record. Double-check author order and the issue date against the official USPTO document before submitting.
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Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What does How Eventbrite Recommends Events Based on Your Social Network cover?
A system that suggests events to you by analyzing your social media connections and your past attendance history to see what your friends are doing.
Who owns patent US 8700540?
Eventbrite Inc owns this patent, granted in 2014.
When does this patent expire?
This patent is expected to expire on April 15, 2034, when the invention enters the public domain.
What is patent US 8700540 cited by?
This patent has been cited by 51 later patents that build on its ideas.
What problem does this patent solve?
This patent represents the shift toward social discovery in the early 2010s, where platforms moved from static listings to personalized feeds. It reflects the industry-wide effort to increase event attendance by leveraging the 'fear of missing out' (FOMO) through social validation. By formalizing how social graphs influence event discovery, it helped companies like Eventbrite integrate directly with platforms like Facebook to drive ticket sales.
What does this patent NOT cover?
Does not cover recommendations based solely on a user's own past behavior without considering social network data.
Patent monitoring