Facebook, in its attempts to continually improve its service and offer new and useful features, has released its latest offering: Place Tips.
What Is Place Tips?
Place Tips is primarily for the mobile platform, and uses location enabled data to provide users with information on nearby goods and services, such as restaurants. Although it shares some similar features as Foursquare, it is not a check-in app. It does however pull data gleaned from your Facebook friends to give you more information about the location you are visiting.
Place Tips For The User
Here’s how it works: when you are near a local restaurant, a notification will appear. Tap on this notification to receive information on the restaurant, including reviews and photos posted by friends. Likewise, if you go somewhere, take some photos or write a post about your experience, your friends will have access to this information when they use Place Tips.
At this point, the information gathered from Place Tips seems to only be shared among friends. However, you will also be given information from the business’s Facebook page including their posts, events and info. This could be helpful, especially if they are having a sale, promotion or event.
Naturally, some people may dislike the location-enabled feature. It helps to know that Place Tips is not a “check-in” feature. When you are at a restaurant or store this information does not show up in your feed.
Place Tips For Business
For businesses, Place Tips is a potentially powerful tool that takes word-of-mouth to the next level. While there have been grumbles from users about the lack of reach and visibility for Facebook business pages, the Place Tips feature sounds like something that can really boost visibility for local businesses. All the more reason to keep your Facebook page updated!
