Facebook Places: A marketer’s heaven

In August 2010, Facebook launched its own location-based service, Facebook Places, allowing its hundreds of millions of users to check in to physical locations to show their contacts exactly where they’ve been and where they currently are. Many online commentators said that this would spell the end for foursquare, whose service they predicted would become redundant unless it evolved.

Foursquare, however, refutes these claims and in the six months that followed its rival’s launch, foursquare says it saw its membership double. Data released at the start of June shows that Facebook is quickly catching up with the market leader and in some of its most popular locations it’s overtaken foursquare in number of check ins. The two share 98 per cent of the market share: foursquare claiming 67 per cent to Facebook’s 31 per cent.

Airports are the most popular log in places – long periods of waiting coupled with the perfect ‘look what I’m doing’ moment – and Facebook HQ also appears on the top 10. The majority of users are currently in America, but the top international location for check ins is surprisingly the MCG.

Users can add any business they want to check in to, but taking control of your company’s locations is recommended. With such a large database of users to target, making sure your details – such as address and opening hours – are correct can have a huge effect on driving people to your business. Updating deals – such as freebies or discounts for check ins at certain times – will also increase custom, as well as word of mouth advertising as Places users update their status to tell their friends of the deal they’re taking advantage of.

With 17.6 per cent of smart-phone users checking in to locations, and this number steadily increasing, these two companies look set to battle it out for a while yet with the ultimate winners being the businesses taking advantage of these services.