Facebook Places Headlines
Survey Finds Local Marketing Dollars Go To Facebook Places Over Foursquare, GrouponWhen Facebook Places launched last summer, one of the first questions (other than “how will this impact my privacy?”) was “How will this impact other location-based startups?” While Foursquare was gaining tractions and users, some questioned if Facebook’s entry into location would serve to squash it.
How to Build Business with Facebook Deals
There’s an independent theater near my house that offers customers a cheesy looking discount card. Show it to the disinterested teen-ager behind the glass when you buy a ticket and he’ll take your money and punch a hole in the card. After five punches, the next film is free.
Facebook Launches Deals Platform
Facebook has partnered with brands including Starbucks, O2 and Yo! Sushi to launch its much-anticipated platform Deals in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
If you’ve been waiting to get those handy mobile deals on your pocket robot, it appears that your wait is over. The newest version of the Facebook application for Android introduces Facebook Deals.
Facebook Launches ‘Sponsored Stories’
Facebook is rolling out a new ad product that lets advertisers give prominent visibility to interactions a user’s friends have with a brand. “Sponsored Stories” can be built around user interactions with a brand’s applications, likes, location check-ins and page posts. Sponsored Stories are the same type of content that already appears in the main News Feed, only now brands have a way of making sure they’re visible, with promotion to a placement on the right side of the page.
About Facebook Places
Profile: Facebook Places adds geolocation capabilities to the existing Facebook social network platform. With over 500 million users worldwide, Facebook is poised to have an extraordinarily disruptive effect on the location based social networking (LBSN) landscape.
Facebook places allows consumer to attach location data to updates in their Facebook news feed. It also allows users to express positive sentiment toward a location through the “Like” button. The ability to add photos and videos is certain to follow. These additional actions represent deeper engagements by making the location itself the focus of the engagement. Facebook Places currently offers only social check-ins. This represents a shallow engagement because the location itself is incidental. It is being used simply to notify friends about one’s current location. Facebook places allows the unique capability to “Tag” friends and check them into the same location. Provided that Facebook can address the privacy issues of encouraging users to share their friends’ locations, the tagged check-in can have a multiplier effect in terms of the value and depth of these engagements.
Promotional Mechanisms: Facebook Deals allows businesses to offer rewards and discounts to consumers for checking in at specific locations. The deals show up in the Facebook Places mobile app. Users can simply select the deal to claim it and then present it to a sales clerk to cash it in. The Facebook Places infrastructure is based on dedicated Place pages for each and every location. This is where all check-ins and related activities are aggregated. If a business has one location – and therefore, one Facebook Places Page – it can be claimed and verified through a process similar to that of Yelp and Google Places. The Place Page can then be merged with the business’s Fan Page into one. Facebook does not currently offer a solution for multi-location businesses.
Screenshots:
Number of Users: 200 million (Mobile, December, 2010), 600 million (Total, January, 2011)
Availability: United States
Mobile Platforms: iPhone, Mobile Web
Author: Derek Browers
Archived Headlines
5 Creative Facebook Places Marketing CampaignsThe Facebook Marketing Series is supported by Buddy Media, Power Tools for Facebook. Unsure how to respond on Facebook? Download Buddy Media’s free whitepaper, “The Definitive Guide to Social Media Moderation and Publishing.” With more than 700 status updates posted on Facebook per second, you need a game plan.
The Other Location Shoe Drops: Facebook Deals. Will It Discount Rivals?
Today at Facebook’s event in Palo Alto, CA, the company had a lot to say about their mobile platform. Yes, they had updates to their Android and iPhone apps. And yes, the company implemented a new single sign-on process. And yes, they unveiled a new location write API. But the thing they announced that may have the biggest impact is Deals.
Facebook Places vs. Facebook Pages
Sites such as Gowalla and Foursquare have made a lot of noise in the last year as social media has made its way to mobile phones. Not only do these sites allow you to connect with friends and find out where they are, but also allow businesses jump into a new form of marketing.
