The Small Business Location War Escalates: Enter Facebook

By Dan Nieves

Recent news is that Facebook has new location-based features in the works to be unveiled in the immediate future – might be very soon, so keep an eye out!

The location-features will be similar to that of social media outlets such as Foursquare, Brightkite and Gowalla – talk about direct competition. Facebook will allow users to check in at various locations, for example restaurants and coffee shops. It was only a matter of time before Facebook jumped on board the geo-location bandwagon.

Benefits for Small Business Owners

With Facebook adding location-based features, this adds another avenue for small businesses to engage and attract customers. The immense amount of users on Facebook presents a huge pool of potential customers that small businesses could tap into via the location-services. Moreover, there are significant advertising opportunities to be had by the new features. Potential customers could be targeted both geographically and demographically. Location-based services create opportunities to really hone in to local markets.

It will be interesting to see the impact of these new features. With a big time player such as Facebook jumping into the location game, things are sure to heat up!