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As ubiquitous a term Facebook has become, it’s hard to imagine it as a small company. But a recent infographic from JESS3 titled, “The Geosocial Universe” illustrates how large Facebook & other social network’s opportunity given a mobile market reaches nearly 5 billion people.
Will Facebook’s announcement of “Places” yesterday help boost these numbers quicker for the social giant?
It feels a bit like Christmas morning. Well, maybe not that joyous, but for geo-location nerds out there - the day has arrived.
Facebook has announced its new geo-location feature, Facebook Places. With Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, BrighKite, Scvngr, and a bevy of other players trying to build engagement for users and brands while following you wherever you go, their adoption rate has been slow, and audience even slower. But now with Facebook’s announcement, the 500 million + users of Facebook have quickly become the biggest geo-location social network out there.
However, let’s back up one minute, first, they are launching U.S. only in this first phase - so it’s only a little under 200 million users who will be able to take part at first.
Secondly, Facebook is doing something great with this feature, they are not trying to squash the competition, they are joining forces, and opening special partnerships with the main geo-location social network stars, such as Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla and Booyah. They will be utilizing the Places API and integrating the feature into their current applications and be working exclusively with Facebook, rather than against them.
Around 5:23 p.m. PST, Facebook made the announcement of Places, as it is was created to share where you are with your friends, see where your friends currently are, and see what places are around you. The product will launch on the iPhone app later this evening, and on all advanced mobile browsers.
Follow-up story coming with more details early tomorrow…But read all about the new Facebook Places here in the meantime.
Will you be using Facebook Places?
In a just-released Forrester research report, it said that most marketers should refrain from location-based services, citing that just a mere 4% of the US online adults have ever checked in on the “location game.” And only 1% update these services more than once a week.
The study revealed some interesting statistics, as it looked at a large number of location-based sites, including popular players such as Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown and Loopt. And to add to the study, a whopping 84% of respondents said they had no idea or were not even familiar enough with such types of apps. This study comes at an interesting time, since 2010 was marked the year of location-based services, igniting fires under social media marketers - all trying to integrate location-based strategies into their marketing programs.
And to add to the bottleneck, the report said almost 80% of location-based service users are male, with close to 70% of them between the ages of 19 and 35, and 70% have college degrees or higher. Forrester also discovered that 38% were more likely to say friends and family ask their opinions before a purchase, in addition, this crowd was very open to mobile coupons and offers as well. This vertical is also more resourceful with research prior to a purchase where nearly 20% are more likely to consult their phones before buying to conduct more research and read customer reviews.
This certainly brings most marketers back to reality before jumping on the location game bandwagon.
Although this data cuts down a very small segment to target, it’s still very approachable when you consider products that live in the gaming, consumer electronics, and sportswear verticals. These are the verticals that lead the way with testing these applications, according to Forrester. However, the location space is full of brands that are already proving they are not just for the male audience. Big players such as Starbucks, Oil of Olay, Bravo, Gossip Girl, Campbell’s Soup, Louis Vuitton, Bon Appétit, Lucky Magazine, TLC, and PepsiCo are all currently experimenting with location-based services.
But as in any new technology, there is always the question of adoption rate, and to be honestly blunt, these networks are very much in their infant stages. Foursquare has just over 2 million users; Loopt has 4 million, and MyTown with 2.5 million - barely a drop in the bucket from a marketing standpoint.
And the next question is scale, when this will happen? As of now, the digital social network rulers such as Facebook, Google and Twitter are not fully involved in the location game. When their entrance takes place, this will help set the market more efficiently, creating a much higher adoption rate. And a drastic shift in competition for the current market.
As Forrester always does well, and does often - it reports the facts. I don’t think marketers should completely avoid location-based service programs, nor is Forrester saying that. They are however saying that you should tread lightly and not expect any massive returns as you start to experiment in this sort of advertising.
However, the market always moves quickly, as we all have become aware of over the past several years in social media’s popularity. If digital adoption rates stick, I’d say we would be in a good place to give this just a bit more of time before more users begin amass on each of these networks.
Depending on your specialty, I’d say it’s reckless to not at least consider location-based services when considering new social media programs. Your brand’s demographic might not fall directly into what Forrester reports, however, you should consider the question of “When?” At exactly what point will the ‘branded’ location-based network space take off in popularity? When will they eventually act like your Facebook branded community does now?
I think the real question is: Do you want to get involved now, or several months or years from now when every brand on the planet is doing it?
These types of applications will grow; they will be built beyond a cliché, cornball badge to tell your friends on Facebook or Twitter about. Monetary, if not branded products will soon replace these and be offered in place of a ‘real’ incentive for checking-in. We already have started to see this in mobile coupon deals that Starbucks offers.
These incentives will get better and will have a stronger support system as the adoption rate increases.
We’ve just started in this game kids…just give it time.
