Off the Pass: week of August 23, 2010

Talk of the town last week was almost exclusively centred around the fact that the 800-pound gorilla that is Facebook finally unveiled their push into the location based social networking scene. Check out the very slick official promotion video for a quick and easy introduction. While at time of writing only available in the US, this has firmly cemented location based “checkins” as a core part of social media.

Here you find a selection of links to the best blog posts following last week’s release by Facebook.

Dubbed Facebook Places, the simplicity of it disappointed some and was hailed as genius and radical by others. Rather than competing directly with the similar but still niche services like Foursquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR by offering any functionality around loyalty or gaming, Facebook Places simply lets a Facebook user look up the venue they are in on a map (using their mobile phone), and by “checking in” announcing to their friends that they are there.

More controversial, and adding to the constant buzz about Facebook’s privacy issues, is that similar to tagging your friends in photos you can also tag them with your check in. Yes, users can check other users in at venues, a very aggressive move on Facebook’s part, causing privacy organisations to go up in arms. This does however require that your friend’s privacy settings allow such activities, and they will be asked to approve the check in before it is posted. As usual though, the default privacy settings for this stalkers dream addition to Facebook assume you want to share your data. It is strongly recommended you review your settings, see a great walk through of the privacy settings, also available as a video tutorial.

Rather than shooting existing location based social tools out of the water (Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown and so on after all add a unique twist to the act of checking in that Facebook as of yet is not competing with and in fact they all integrate with Facebook Places) it seems Facebook set their sights squarely on the other two giants in small business local marketing: Google, with their own set of Google Place pages; and Yelp, the online review site who recently also added checkins to their core offering. This opinion is also echoed by HubSpot, emphasizing the huge market opportunity in local marketing spend going online.

That said, with Facebook having unprecedented access to all the data about our lives and friends, this move does beg the question, is it wise to spend marketing time and money on any of the smaller location based networks, or if it is time to delete Foursquare from your phone for good.

Foursquare, being the most successful location based social media startup so far, counters with “We’re here to reinvent what happens after the checkin.”

It is clear that Facebook is placing a huge bet on location sharing and has worked long and hard on the addition of Places. Along with the US release came an API through which developers can access the functionality and data, making it possible for sites integrating with Facebook to see where their visitors actually are. If you look at the Facebook iPhone app you will also see that the new Places icon is right in the middle of the screen. Furthermore, Facebook recently acquired Hot Potato, an iPhone app through which any activity (reading, music listening, tv watching…) can be shared associated with the user’s location so surely this is merely the first phase of a grander scheme. Makes perfect sense, as location is merely an attribute of what we actually do when we are there. It is what we do at a place, and why, that is interesting and engaging, not where we are.

So what are the consequences of Facebook Places for restaurants? With over 500 million active users on Facebook, location sharing in social media will now quickly pick up volume and go beyond the “early adopter” phase spearheaded by Brightkite, MyTown, Foursquare, Gowalla and others. As Facebook users start adding Places for restaurants, and checking in to restaurants adding comments and tagged friends, the amount of highly targetable and actionable data available to marketers will explode.

So might of course negative comments and rants, and with the ease and speed that they can now reach big networks of connected people it gets increasingly important to have a mental model and process on how to deal with such occurrences quickly.

While it has been said that a Facebook Page for a brand eventually will be able to merge with a Facebook Place for the same brand, initially this is yet another thing to keep track of and “claim” by your business, just like you can claim your Google Place page and your page on Yelp.

If you are a European restaurant, where beneficially this functionality has not yet been released, I recommend setting up one or more Google Alerts on variations of the phrase “Facebook Places restaurant” and read up on case studies, experiences and suggestions as our brethren in the US take the plunge into this new quagmire of terribly exciting local marketing options.

If you only have time to read one summary of the Places functionality, I recommend the “field guide to Facebook Places” published by Mashable.

Finally; as a visual way of presenting the market opportunity mobile, social media and location sharing create; this infographic by Jess3 captures it incredibly well. That’s a lot of people…

In other online marketing, technology and restaurant related news:

This blog is brought to you by Livebookings, Europe’s largest online marketing and reservations service for the restaurant industry. Last week we were proud to announce partnerships with several of the UK’s leading restaurant groups.

Recently released Ofcom report shows clearly how UK use of mobile web and smartphone rockets. Smartphone ownership almost doubled the past year and 13.5 million people now browse the web from their phones.

As an example of how location based social media does inroads into marketing and discount vouchers, Gap recently ran a 25% discount with Foursquare where all you had to do to get the discount was check in.

With the connection between a person “checking in” and actually really being at that place being vague at best (the new Facebook Places even lets you check in your friends, whether they are there or not), should businesses worry about “fake checkins”? No, says Kent Lindstrom, former CEO of Friendster and gives seven reasons why.

While location sharing is getting all of the limelight now, Mashable reminds us that there are other trends in social media we need to be aware of.

Facebook Places is only the latest push in a feature set that has attracted more and more people to the gigantic social networking site. Indeed, AdAge presents compelling numbers that various brands’ Facebook Pages now eclipse their websites and email marketing subscription databases. Also, through Facebook marketers get unprecedented access to customer demographic data. Coca Cola alone has over 10 million “fans” on Facebook, which is more than the location based services Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt have together… What is a “fan” on Facebook worth compared to the value of people going through the bother of visiting a website though? It isn’t like those 10 million Coca Cola fans listen intently to everything the soda maker says.

Clearly social media is a given part of any restaurant’s marketing mix today, but how are you going about it? Feel you need a social media MOT? This social media audit will help you review your activities to find areas of improvement.

Overwhelmed by how many websites and social networks you “should” be signed up to in order to protect your brand name? Mashable list seven services to help you register your name across a range of social media sites.

With your social media and blogging strategy firmly in place, an interesting way to build buzz around your restaurant is to reach out to food bloggers. But please, make sure you don’t go all PR steam engine on them. Here a great interview with blogger extraordinaire Sian Meades providing some valuable insights on how to go about your blogger outreach.

Sian (@SianySianySiany) then followed that up with a blog post describing in her eyes the most perfect PR blogger event she has ever been to: Motorola Milestone.

For fun:

If you are easily offended, do not follow this link. But if you feel you need help kickstarting your next social media push, this site is making your strategy up so you don’t have to. I told you it was rude.

Think you had a bad hang over last Saturday? Check these guys out for support. Little did I know owls are so heavy drinkers. (/via @SianySianySiany)

That’s it for this week. Come back Monday next week for a new set of news in restaurant online marketing you shouldn’t miss out on. If you want to get updates of links and comments throughout the week, follow @manne on Twitter (news and blog links mixed with random chit chat ranging from recent restaurant visits like the glorious Polpetto to current events) or on Google Buzz (news links only).

By Magnus Hultberg in Blog, Off the Pass: Week in online marketing