Happenings
Happenings are Fyndow's time-boxed posts — the things a business or a person wants the world (or just their community) to know about right now. A weekend market, a one-day sale, a workshop, a grand opening, a seasonal promotion: each is a Happening with a start, an end, and an audience. They are deliberately ephemeral. A Happening surfaces while it is relevant and quietly retires when its window closes, so the feed always reflects what is actually going on rather than an archive of stale flyers.
This chapter covers the three types of Happening, the two ways to present one, who can post, the two ways a Happening reaches people, its lifecycle from draft to expiry, and how viewers engage with reactions and comments. The money side — what it costs to reach the wider public and how that payment works — lives in Paying for Reach, and this chapter links there rather than repeating it.
What a Happening Is
A Happening always carries a type, a display mode, an audience (reach), and — for most types — a run-window with a start and end. Beyond that, what's required depends on the type. The system is intentionally forgiving: a polished poster needs almost nothing typed out, while a fully composed event card asks for the details that make it useful (when, where, what).
The Three Types
Every Happening is one of three types, and the type is chosen first because it determines what the post needs.
| Type | What it's for | Who can post it | Anchored to a place/time? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Event | A real-world gathering — a market, class, meetup, fundraiser, launch, open day | Anyone signed in | Yes — needs a start, an end, and a location |
| Promotion | A business advertising one of its own offerings — a sale, a service special, a limited deal | A business owner, for a business they own | No — the offer is the post, not a venue |
| Ad | A business raising broad awareness of its brand or storefront | A business owner, for a business they own | No — the brand is the post, not a venue |
An event is time-and-place anchored: it must say when it starts, when it ends, and where it happens. A promotion or ad advertises a business rather than a location, so it never carries a venue — even if one is supplied, it isn't shown. The distinction keeps each type honest: events tell you where to go, promotions and ads tell you what a business is offering.
Two Ways to Present It: Flyer and Compose
There are two display modes, and they exist because creators arrive with creative in two very different states.
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Flyer — You already have a finished poster (designed in Canva, exported from a design tool, handed to you by a graphic designer). You upload that one image and it is the post. Because the poster already carries the copy and the details, Fyndow doesn't force you to retype them: a flyer needs only the image and a short caption. Even an event flyer is exempt from typing out its location, because the image already shows it.
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Compose — You don't have a poster, so Fyndow builds the card for you. You supply an image plus typed details — a description, and for an event the date, time, and place — and Fyndow lays them together into a clean, consistent card. Compose mode is the path most people use when they're posting on the fly.
Both modes work for all three types. The choice is purely about how much you've already prepared.
Open Posting: Who Can Post What
Happenings open the megaphone to everyone, not just businesses.
- Anyone signed in can post an event — as themselves. You don't need to run a business to tell your neighbourhood about a cleanup day, a pop-up, or a community fundraiser. An event posted by a person simply shows that person's name and avatar as its byline.
- Promotions and ads require a business you own. Because they advertise a commercial offering, they must attach to a business on your account, and the post carries that business's name and logo as its byline.
This is a deliberate design choice: the right to be heard isn't reserved for paying businesses. The thing Fyndow charges for is reach, not the act of posting — and that's the same whether you're a person or a business, whatever the type.
Two Ways to Reach People
Every Happening picks an audience, and the audience is where the free-versus-paid line is drawn.
Community reach — free, members only, immediate
A Happening posted to a community is visible only to that community's approved members. It is free, it is self-moderated by the community the way the rest of community content is, and it goes live immediately — no payment, no review, no waiting. You must be an approved member of the community to post there, and only members see it. This is the everyday channel: tell the people who already belong to your space what's coming up.
(Communities and their membership model are covered in Communities & Forums.)
Public reach — paid per post, reviewed first
A Happening posted to the public feed is visible to everyone on Fyndow, geo-aware so people nearby see what's relevant to them. Public reach is paid per post and reviewed by Fyndow before it goes live. The price is flat and uniform — the same whether you're posting an event as a person or an ad as a business — because what you're buying is distribution, and distribution costs the same regardless of who you are or what you're promoting. You pay for reach, not for status.
The review step is a quality gate, not an editorial one: it keeps the public feed free of spam, scams, and content that doesn't belong, so that the feed stays worth opening. Most posts sail through; the few that don't can be fixed and resubmitted.
| Community reach | Public reach | |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Approved community members | Everyone, geo-aware |
| Cost | Free | Flat paid-per-post |
| Goes live | Immediately | After Fyndow's review |
| Moderation | Self-moderated by the community | Reviewed before publishing |
| Run-window dates | Optional | Required |
The economics — what it costs, what you get, and how the payment flows — are in Paying for Reach.
Lifecycle and Auto-Expiry
A Happening moves through a small, predictable set of states. Where it starts depends on its reach.
- Community posts are created live straight away.
- Public posts begin as a draft, move to pending review once paid, and become live when Fyndow approves them. If a post is rejected, the author is told why and can edit and resubmit it for another look — fixing a problem doesn't mean paying again.
- When a Happening's run-window closes, it auto-expires to ended and drops out of the feeds. This is what keeps Happenings honest: nothing lingers past its relevance. Promotions and ads, which don't always carry an end date, simply stay live until their window closes or the author removes them.
While a public event is live and upcoming, people who follow the posting business can get a heads-up — a notification when a new Happening is published, and a reminder shortly before an event starts. The full notification picture is in Notifications & Digests.
Reactions and Comments
Happenings are social. Any viewer who can see a Happening can engage with it:
- Emoji reactions — a quick tap to react with one of a small set of emoji (like, love, fire, clap, wow). Each person gets one reaction at a time: tapping a different emoji switches it, tapping the same one again removes it. A running count is shown on the card.
- Comments — a lightweight, one-level-deep thread. People can comment on a Happening and reply to a top-level comment; replies don't nest endlessly. The author is notified when someone comments, and authors, the posting business's owner, and Fyndow moderators can remove comments that don't belong. Removed comments are masked rather than erased, so reply threads stay readable.
Engagement follows visibility: anyone can react to and comment on a live public Happening, while a community Happening is open only to that community's members.
Where You Create and Manage Them
Happenings live in the main Fyndow app, right alongside the feed where people discover them — not tucked away in a separate back-office tool. You create one by choosing a type, picking flyer or compose, supplying the creative and details, and selecting community or public reach. From your own Happenings view you can see everything you've posted across every state — drafts, in-review, live, and ended — for both posts you made as yourself and posts you made for a business you own. Editing, resubmitting a rejected post, and removing a Happening all happen there.
For businesses, Happenings sit naturally next to the rest of the toolkit covered in The Business Toolkit; for everyone, they're part of the same discovery surface as the Marketplace and Communities.