Facebook Places now everywhere

Warren Davies, digital planner with Cornwell. Picture: Aaron Francis
Source: The Australian

FACEBOOK’S move to scrap its mobile-only Places functionality this week has some industry experts scratching their heads.

Members have been able to “check-in” to locations using the Places feature on smartphones but Facebook will soon expand the service to cover different platforms.

“Before you could only ‘check-in’ to locations using the Places feature on a smartphone,” the company said. “Now you can add location to anything.

“Lots of people use Facebook to talk about where they are, have been or want to go. Now you can add location from anywhere, regardless of what device you are using, or whether it is a status update, photo or wall post.

“As a part of this, we are phasing out the mobile-only Places feature.”

Warren Davies, digital planner with Melbourne-based agency Cornwell, said the “earth moved for me just a little” after the announcement because Foursquare seemed to have “knocked off” Facebook.

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Foursquare is a popular location-based service for mobile devices.

“Big ups to Foursquare and a dedicated location service with a difference. This news signals that specialist social media services can survive and even flourish beyond the reach of Facebook,” Mr Davies wrote on his blog.

“It signals we need diversity in our online diet and we have the capacity and attention to sustain a wide and deep online ecosystem.”

Facebook Australia had only recently announced that Westfield and others would use Places as a marketing tool.

Shoppers who “check-in” when they visit Westfield shopping centres are given special discounts and deals.

Westfield marketing general manager John Batistich said Facebook’s update won’t affect its service.

“The change means shoppers will now tag Westfield in their updates just like they do their friends and the deal will appear under their news feed,” he said. “It’s very simple, and very convenient.

“This is good news for our retailers as well as our shoppers, as the update means deals will be shared with even more people, and shoppers who opt-in will receive exclusive offers straight to their mobile.”

Mr Batistich described Westfield’s partnership with Facebook as a “great success”.

“In just the first two weeks we’ve seen a significant spike in check-ins at Westfield centres nationally,” he said.

But Mr Davies said Westfield should in future consider the benefits of a dedicated location-based service like Foursquare over a mainstream network like Facebook.

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Facebook Served a Trillion Pageviews in June, Google Says

Facebook served a trillion pageviews during the month of June, according to Google, which released data yesterday apparently confirming Facebook’s reach.

Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner lists Facebook.com as serving 1 trillion page views to 870 million unique visitors for the month of June. DoubleClick is Google’s ad management and ad serving technology foundation for its network of partners.

In terms of users, the top five sites are Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, Microsoft’s Live.com, and Wikipedia.org. In terms of users, the list proceeds: Facebook, Baidu.com, YouTube, Yahoo, and Live.com.

If the data is right, the information provides some fascinating insight into the true reach of global sites around the globe. For example, in terms of page views, Google measures YouTube as serving 100 billion page views for the month. (The estimates appear to be rounded to two significant digits.)

Above that, however, lies Baidu.com, with 120 billion page views for the month. And on the list is vkontakte.ru, which serves up 52 billion page views per month even though it attracts just 38 million unique visitors. Google’s other social networking site, Orkut.com.br, also serves 48 billion page views per month, against 61 million uniques. Even Yahoo.co.jp is listed at 32 billion page views, and 82 million uniques.

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Facebook hasn’t publicly confirmed the higher user number, although the company has scheduled its f8 developer conference for next month, where company executives may confirm the number. To date, Facebook has only confirmed that it has 750 million users.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in July that the company didn’t publicize the milestone because user numbers are not as important as they once were.
“The reason why we didn’t report it is we don’t think it’s the metric to watch right now,” Zuckerberg said during a press event that saw the unveiling of Facebook video calls with Skype and a revamp of the its other chat features.

For more from Mark, follow him on Twitter @MarkHachman.

For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.

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