Look out Foursquare and Google Latitude! Facebook is now getting into the location-based social networking sphere.
Ad Age reported that Facebook is preparing to launch a new feature that will allow any Facebook users to broadcast their current location along with status updates. This allows marketers to further target individuals with even more relevant location-relevant ads.
To be honest, it seems absolutely natural that Facebook would get into the geo-networking game. The more information it has about it’s users, the better relevant ads it can serve to them. Moreover, it gives its users yet another tool with which they can interact with their social network. Wouldn’t it be kinda cool to know the exact location of some of your Facebook friends (or be really really creepy at least)?
Obviously such capabilities offer amazing benefits for local marketers. With such functionality, local marketers can serve hyper-targeted ads to users based on location. Imagine walking down the sidewalk and seeing an ad for a special offer at the store across the street on your mobile phone. You’re likely way more likely to drop by when you are right next to the place than when you are just sitting at home. Of course, such incredibly advanced and precise targeting is a little further into the future. Moreover, there hasn’t been as much work in location-based mobile advertising. However, there’s no doubt that such location-based advertising holds great promise especially for local marketers.
I predict that Facebook will likely first build out the “social” part of the new location-based broadcasting functionality before trying to dip their toes into advertising. However, they already have a massive user base (over 400 million people last time I checked) and an already social platform. Thus, if you would want anyone to test out the efficacy of location-based social networks, it might as well be Facebook.
If you have used location-based social networks like Foursquare, Loopt, Google Latitude, etc. for your business, how successful were they and what tactics did you use?