Facebook Announces ‘Places’ – Direct Hit to Foursquare’s Bow?

This post is meant to be a follow up to my post yesterday Facebook Fires Torpedo at Foursquare as well as be my personal coverage of the announcement.

5:15 pm Wednesday evening I waited patiently for the Facebook event to begin on their Live streaming event page (http://apps.facebook.com/facebooklive/), as I watched a chat feed of Facebook user attendees post things like “What’s this for?” and “Add me please”.  Clearly most of the people attending the live stream were not even aware what is was for or why they were there.

We watched quietly to a live feed of hundreds of people mingled in the event room as melodic tunes rumbled in the background.  Checking the clock AGAIN.  It’s starting late.  No surprise.  Just like the old AT&T days…  Brilliant marketing, very poor execution.

Mark Zuckerberg finally grabbed the mic at about 5:25 pm and gave a brief speech about how great launch nights are and how important they are.

He then announced “Facebook Places”, their long-awaited location-based service with a story about testing it over dinner and finding friends had checked into the same place they were eating.

The product was designed to do three things; enable check-ins, finding where friends are now and discovering new places around you.  The focus is to let your friends learn where you hang out in general and where you happen to be at any given moment, so you can connect.  Sound familiar?

An interesting component of how the product displays the list of places to check-in is based not only on location, but places THEY think you would find interesting.  Clearly using your profile data as a tool to provide initial check-in locations. The system displays not only YOUR friends when you check in, but others that may be checked-in there as well.  This may be a significant privacy concern for many.

They have also included the Tagging functionality for statuses within the application, enabling you to post not only to your feed but a friends wall.  Presumably this will also work for fanpages, making it incredibly valuable for page owners, especially if it automatically does this by default.

They discussed a slew of privacy settings and allowable functions that share location information with others, including opting out of allowing friends to tag you when they check in.  Some of the information on privacy settings was a bit light and more detail on this will need to be dissected.

Then the BIG announcement:

A new API for business partners to develop connections to the new product.  A closed beta is being conducted now with a “few partners”.  No doubt the API integrations capabilities is the significant component here.  Gowalla got on stage and discussed their partnership with Facebook to incorporate Facebook Places into their product.  It will allow Gowalla users to post into Facebook. Foursquare’s Luedorf then got on stage and endorsed the technology and how they look forward to working with Facebook and integrating the capability into their offering. A host of additional location-based organizations used the mic to also weigh in and endorse Facebook Places.  Clearly they were all taking a sigh of relief that their voyage on the sea of geolocation was not being directly attacked by the Facebook social media battleship.

Apparently Facebook’s jump into the geolocation space is designed to be a backbone component for the entire industry, rather than a direct naval assault to take over the location-based high seas.

It appears that none of the announcements related to Facebook Places adds additional value to consumers utilizing location-based technologies in the form of a deal/offer distribution platform, nor an improved marketing platform for business.

By Robert M. Caruso
CEO fondalo, Inc.
www.facebook.com/robertcaruso
www.twitter.com/fondalo

Facebook Fires Torpedo at Foursquare

Rumors abound that tomorrow Facebook will be announcing their own location-based or “geolocation” check-in product.  For sometime, there has been a lot of noise from industry watchers that Facebook has been working on such a push into the fast growing location-based market.   Now, it appears that the rumors may become reality.

In my humble opinion, this seemingly inevitable launch represents the biggest challenge Foursquare has seen to date, and ultimately could lead to extensive collateral damage they can’t recover from.  Not only is Foursquare struggling to get its arms around its monetization and revenue plan, more importantly it is dealing with execution.  This is outlined well by Augie Ray’s recent post – Foursquare’s Starbucks Mistake: Five Ways Foursquare Advertising Is Getting Less Interesting.

The big issue here is that Facebook has 500 million users and company fanpage listings in their system already and can easily connect them within a geolocation platform.  Turning the “like” feature and fanpage “check-ins” into a mobile marketing realm of engagement, which connects back to feeds AND fanpages.  Foursquare can’t touch these immense challenges with their current or foreseeable platform.

If our poor start-up friend Foursquare hasn’t planned for this inevitable torpedo attack and developed evasive maneuvers to avoid the hit and be able to counter attack effectively, we might all KNOW “who sank this battleship”.

The bigger issue that has not been resolved within this marketplace is the revenue model and consumer value solution.  I suspect Facebook will be using this tactic as a way to push their advertising network into the mobilesphere.  A good idea?  Possibly for revenue and advertisers, but what about the consumer?

An effective delivery platform of “deals” for the consumer, as well as a clear marketing ROI solution for businesses to utilize within the geolocation space, that my friends represents the hole that needs to be filled.  Both companies should have built a delivery and consumer benefit platform first, then worked on the check-in side.

I actually know who is already working on doing this effectively.  More to come on that…

By Robert M. Caruso
CEO fondalo, Inc.
www.facebook.com/robertcaruso
www.twitter.com/fondalo

How A PR Professional Screws Up A Social Media Connection

Wednesday, I was going through my Twitter feed and reading posts when I came across a post discussion with a PR professional.  I went to review their Bio and feed to see who it was and if they seemed an interesting person to follow.

Their Twitter Bio read something to the effect of; Public Relations and Social Media Consultant. Pro Blogger, etc, etc.  So I went ahead and followed the individual, as their Bio seemed to portray someone savvy enough about PR and Social Media to consult others.

So, regardless of the fact that they only follow less than 500 people and had fewer than that following them, I decided to engage them.  Like many people who follow me, who are interesting, I extended an invite to my PERSONAL Facebook profile.  I do this because Facebook can provide a more intimate environment for getting to know someone over Twitter.

Shortly after sending my brief DM to this individual, I received the following response.

“Social Media Expert. I have a rule Auto DM asking me to connect on Facebook get unfollowed.  Get a website or blog.  Be real.”

This from a professional PR/Social Media Consultant and a purported “Pro Blogger”.

I politely replied with something to the effect of: “As a matter of fact I am real. I would be very careful how you DIS engage new followers on Twitter (insert person’s name). “  Since they had already unfollowed, I decided to go ahead and call them out with the same message in my feed.

So, this little post is just a little reminder that not everybody who consults or says they are a pro at Social Media are said.  If you are a PR Professional, be careful that your previous attitudes and quirks aren’t brought into the Social space.  If you are new to Social Media and are coming from another profession, be patient with people and make sure you know what you know.  Realize that at the heart of Social Media is the Human. Would you assume things and kill a business relationship like that outside of Twitter?

Why would anyone want to hire a Public Relations “Pro” or Social Media “Consultant” that so quickly burns a connection so flippantly?

By Robert M. Caruso
CEO fondalo, Inc.
www.facebook.com/robertcaruso
www.twitter.com/fondalo

Facebook’s Latest Blunder – Removal of Bit/Shortened Links

To my amazement today I noticed that when posting a shortened URL link on Facebook, as I usually do, the normal automated resolving of the regular link and subsequent page image is now not functioning.

Here is a little image I put together to show the issue now, and how it worked before.

The question here is why would they do this?  At this point I frequently don’t even ask myself this question as it relates to Facebook’s crazy changes and “upgrades”.  However, the impact this will have will be profound, for some.

The change has affected posts from all third-party applications as well, so posting to your fanpage or personal profile from HootSuite for example is affected the same way.

So on top of the changes made by Facebook along with their new Facebook Questions Platform that has created additional steps to post anything, we now have to deal with additional reduced ease of use with this change.

Come on!  Give us a break!

By Robert M. Caruso
CEO fondalo, Inc.
www.facebook.com/robertcaruso
www.twitter.com/fondalo