Facebook Places
Ok, well it’s been just over a year since FourSquare launched at SXSW 2009, and within days afterwards I am sure naysayers were saying, yeah that’s great but just wait till Facebook launches the same thing, and they’ll be toast. Well yesterday was that day…yesterday Facebook announced Facebook Places.
I am sure the details of what IT is will be reported all over the web, so I won’t go into all those details here… but I watched the video of the conference announcing it and major kudos to ex Socialight’er Michael Sharon (product mgr for Places) for what seems to be a nice well thought through execution… someone like Michael obviously “gets it” more than anyone, and I think that the feature will be a huge hit.
As a pretty passive user of Facebook, the thing I enjoy about it the most is the ability to easily keep tabs on friends… Read more
Presence at Place of Sale (PAPOS) The New Click Rate?
So if you’ve followed the news in the mobile social networking world recently, first we had people like Yelp introduce “check in” and word that Facebook has the feature on its way, then Foursquare struck a number of big media deals which has kept the mobile location aware world on the front pages of the trade press with thoughts about new ad models focused on cost per check in.
Well after giving it a bit more thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that the industry needs a more broad “presence at place of sale” (PAPOS?) metric that could capture all the events where a person actually walks into a brick and mortar retailer and that action is recorded by any available means.
The PAPOS could then be looped back into the marketing ecosystem serving as the click or conversion rate for all advertising, both on and offline, targeted at driving brick and mortar foot traffic. Read more
Foursquare, Facebook, Yelp and the Battle of the Check-ins
In case you missed it a few weeks back Yelp announced that they were adding a check-in feature to their service where visitors to retail establishments can check in and let others know where they’re at, or have been. Well today on the front page of the Silicon Alley Insider is a post reporting that Facebook too is working on a similar feature.
NYC based Foursquare has undoubtedly been the leader in this area and their success seems to be attracting a lot of imitators.
Here are some thoughts on the importance of check ins and the ensuing pile on we’re about to see of folks adding on the feature. Read more

