Place Tips in News Feed, Location-Based Services Dead

Facebook has just revealed a new feature in its News Feed, which is called "Place Tips." This new feature is squarely targeted at Yelp, one of the many location-based recommendation applications. Basically, Facebook is re-arranging a business's FB page into a location-based advance reminder including activities / posts / photos from your friend’s list.

The concept of “Place Tips” is just simply simple. When Facebook thinks you are near a public location, convenient store, or a popular restaurant, you will receive a pink notification in your News Feed. When you go ahead and click the pink notification, you will be able to sort through the available notification cards, which detail everything. These cards will be of reviews, posts, and photos from people in your friend lists who’ve visited that particular location previously.

The “Place Tips” Facebook feature is on by default. If you don’t feel up to it, you can turn it off from the “Location” settings. Facebook has said that when you tap on “Place Tips,” it will not post to Facebook or give your current location to anyone. On the other hand, “Place Tips” will keep a track of your location using Wi-Fi and GPS unless you turn it off.

Facebook is in the process of also testing out Bluetooth-based beacons for providing offline notifications at certain locations or shops. Place Tips is a curious app thingy in that it is not an actual Android/iOS application, but a feature within the respective Android/iOS Facebook application.

Although Facebook did not have any issues separating Groups and Messenger into separate Android/iOS Facebook applications, the company has now realized that more people will use this new feature if it is bundled into Android/iOS Facebook application.

Considering the current users of Facebook this is a sound strategy. If you recollect, Facebook's Paper application was an utter disaster for regrouping Facebook into news-centric set-up. Even after that, Facebook went ahead and presented trending “news stories/clippings” on the main page, people began to like and research it. Facebook is now becoming or turning into a personalized newspaper of sorts.

This is why introducing “Place Tips” makes a lot of sense for Facebook. As luck would have it, users of an Android/iOS application don't like switching in-between apps. Making “Place Tips” a separate app will result it in directly competing against forerunners Foursquare, Gowalla, Groupon, Google Places, SCVNGR, Yelp, Shopkick, Loopt, Open table, Fandango, Vouchercloud, NearbyFeed, GetGlue, Google Latitude, Where, Facebook Places, Urbanspoon, Sonar, Geoloqi, and Instagram. These are just some of the popular Android/iOS applications.

By using this strategy, Facebook users can test this new feature without installing another app on their devices. With this move, Facebook has ensures that it would be able to siphon-off some Foursquare, Gowalla, Groupon, Google Places, SCVNGR, Yelp, Shopkick, Loopt, Open table, Fandango, Vouchercloud, NearbyFeed, GetGlue, Google Latitude, Where, Facebook Places, Urbanspoon, Sonar, Geoloqi, and Instagram users who are also using Facebook on their devices.

At present, high-traffic areas like the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, and JFK Airport is where Place Tips is currently being implemented on a test phase with a worldwide rollout at a later date.

Conclusion

We’re eagerly waiting to see how Facebook’s Place Tips in News Feed turns out. We recommend our users to try Facebook’s Place Tips in News Feed and provide their comments on this feature in the comments section below. We would also be posting news as and when we have updates on Facebook’s Place Tips in News Feed related feature.

Do you think that Facebook’s Place Tips in News Feed feature will help it in shaking the location-based services market around the world? How would you rate Facebook’s Place Tips in News Feed related feature? Would you want to switch to another location-based service after you have used Facebook’s Place Tips in News Feed feature?

Source: Facebook Blog – Place Tips in News Feed

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TAGS: #Smartphones #MobilePhones #Mobile #Facebook #FacebookUpdate #PlaceTips #Location #LocationLocationLocation #Yelp #Foursquare #Gowalla #Groupon #GooglePlaces #SCVNGR #Shopkick #Loopt #Open table #Fandango #Vouchercloud #NearbyFeed #GetGlue #GoogleLatitude #Where #Facebook Places #Urbanspoon #Sonar #Geoloqi #Instagram #Tablet