Location based services leapt onto the South African centre stage in a big way last week when Facebook announced the local availability of Facebook Places. The application is designed to help people share information about where they are, connect with friends who may be nearby and find special offers from their favourite retailers, restaurants and entertainment venues.
Facebook's new Places feature lets you share your current location by "checking in" from your smartphone. For businesses, claiming and managing a Place page is a must. Plain and simple, it is a promising new way to connect with customers, prospects and partners.
But what makes this announcement so significant?
It is about sheer volume. Compared to Foursquare with almost 8 Million users globally, Facebook with more than 600 million people already using the platform and close to 4 million in South Africa alone is set to become THE location based service provider of choice.
How does this add to the services that Popimedia already offer?
From a marketing point of view, the sky is the limit and in this instance bigger is definitely better. It now becomes easy for big and small businesses and consumer products in South Africa to leverage Facebook Places for any number of marketing initiatives from loyalty and rewards programmes to creating awareness about new products and special offers. Competitors like Groupon and Google Latitude have a lot of catching up to do as Facebook becomes more ubiquitous.
So is the Facebook Places announcement a big deal? Absolutely.
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