This week, Facebook launched its much awaited geosocial feature, Facebook Places, and the social media community has been abuzz about the new feature and its implications for consumers and marketers. NMS has been excitedly watching the developments and playing around with the new feature on our phones and checking in all over DC, including at the NMS offices. This week, we've got a roundup of perspectives on the new Facebook Places and what it means for Facebook users, businesses, and marketers.
Mashable, Facebook Places: A Field Guide. Mashable offers a detailed first look at the Places feature, how it works, how individuals use it, and how businesses can use it. They also look at how businesses an claim their locations, how users can protect their privacy, and how the feature will interact with other geosocial services like Gowalla and Foursquare.
Ad Age Digital, What Facebook Places Means for Marketers and Developers. Ad Age takes a more in-depth look at how Places affects businesses -- how to manage your business's place, how to integrate it with your existing Facebook Page, and how Facebook Places will use the data -- and how it will allow other developers to use the data.
Entrepreneur Daily Dose, Use Facebook Places to Boost Business and Lift Sales. This piece explains how any organization that has a place should claim their Place Page, and what you should do with it once you've claimed it.
Gawker, The First Thing You Should Do With Facebook Places. So, not all geosocial applications are for everyone. If you're not interested in using Facebook Places, Gawker offers up this handy guide to how to properly adjust your privacy settings so that your friends won't share your location without your permission.
Additionally, Facebook has released a couple of documents that help businesses figure out how Places affects you:
- This PDF explains in detail how Facebook Places are intended to work for businesses:
Download the guide to Places for Businesses (PDF)
- Many of the common questions, such as “What information is included on a Place page?” are addressed in this FAQ:
Facebook Places FAQ -- for Businesses
You’ll notice that Facebook has focused early efforts on highlighting businesses with physical retail locations (such as a Macy’s), but further opportunities will arise for non-retail brands and organizations, likely in the form of checking in during events (movie premiers, campaign rallies, on-street food sampling teams, blogger junkets at company HQ, etc). In the coming days, we're excited to watch this feature grow and see how it impacts the growing geosocial space.