The media world is abuzz with the forthcoming announcement by Facebook that it plans to implement geo-targeting functionality on its website as soon as tomorrow. This could be a big deal for local businesses that have the resources and are savvy enough to know how to use them. Interactive consulting firms like ours are very excited at the potential new business opportunities.
Ian Schafer contributed his predictions to the DigitalNEXT blog at Advertising Age. In short he foresees:
- Location-based services will have immediate and massive scale
- Significant opportunities for local businesses
- Foursquare won’t die
- Facebook’s mobile app will be even more important
- Facebook Credits will inch closer to being a mobile payment platform
But realistically, no one has a clue how this is going to pan out. Let’s think about it. Under the “This could be huge” column, it’s clear that with the penetration of smart phones (50% of Facebook users), the ability to “like” and check-in at local establishments could mean big business for local economies, especially when businesses offer coupons and other incentives to stop and shop.
However under the “Yawn” column, we have the 800lb gorilla in the room: adoption, both by users and marketers. Do people really want all of their friends (or significant others) to know where they are? Twitter has location services and that really hasn’t made a big difference, yet. Finally, most companies don’t have a clear social media strategy or the resources, human, capital and otherwise, to take full advantage of the technology.
What do you think will happen? Offer your prescriptions by commenting below.
Great article! It will be exciting to see how crutial Social Media will be for marketing and the internet as a whole. At our company we have been developing a social media monitoring tool to stay on top of the industry. How do you think services like this will impact the industry?