Facebook recently launched its location-based services feature called Places. The new feature allows Facebook users to check in to ‘places’ and announce their location to their friends.
Using Places you can check in at a given venue (like a restaurant), see if any of your friends are nearby and whether they have checked in to the same location as you, and then ‘tag’ those friends.
Once you’ve checked in to a venue, your location is published as a status update on your Facebook contacts’ news feed and is also listed as an update on the Facebook Places page. (You can learn more on how to use Places in this Business Insider article How to use Facebook Places)
While it’s similar to services like Foursquare where you can check in to various locations, Places doesn’t reward you for visiting the same location multiple times (i.e. unlike FourSquare, Facebook Places doesn’t reward you for visiting your local Starbucks every day with a badge that announces you the “mayor” of that Starbucks location).
Places for Business
Facebook is allowing businesses to “claim” their page on Places. You can easily do this by searching for a Place where your business is located and if it already exists then you can merge your existing Facebook Page with the Places page. Note you will need a Facebook Fan Page in order to connect to Places. If you do not have a Facebook page (also known as a Fan Page), then it’s best to create one and connect it to Places. Facebook has posted an FAQ on Places.
For businesses, Places could be a way to help you promote and grow your business. For instance, when a user checks-in to your location, the name of your business and link to your Facebook page will be mentioned in status updates, which means more visibility.
If a business claims their Place, they will be able to advertise just as they advertise their Facebook Page. A business can easily use the Places page to update customers and prospects of new services or products. One of things you cannot do with Places yet is target ads to people who have checked in to your Place. However, you may target people who ‘Like’ your Place page if you have completed a Page to Place merge.
Privacy Concerns
It’s important to note that Facebook users have the option to change their privacy settings to control how their use of Places is published and to allow or disallow friends to tag them using the feature. In the past, Facebook has been criticized for making the process of controlling Facebook privacy settings complicated. In an effort to help its users understand how to control their privacy settings with Places, Facebook has published an instructional video titled 'controlling your information on Places'.
The only item a business has to be concerned about is whether a user chooses to share their ‘Places’ or not. The only way you will know this is by the amount of check-ins to your Places page. One thing to keep in mind is that it’s easier for a Facebook user to engage in sharing with their existing social network of friends then to install a separate service like Foursquare, and build a new network.
Is Places the place to be? Yes, with over 500 million Facebook users, this is a huge opportunity for businesses to promote and build their brand. Businesses will be able to tailor products and services to their customers depending on their location at any given time. For the Facebook user, it’s just another feature added to the social network site. In order for Facebook to make this service a success, there needs to be some sort incentive to users - perhaps score a deal at some of your favourite ‘Places’ (i.e. implement rewards as in foursquare).
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/technology/19facebook.html?_r=1&ref=technology
http://mashable.com/2010/08/19/facebook-places-guide/