Facebook Places is going to be huge for businesses. You’ve probably been hearing about all of the opportunities that come with check-in apps like Foursquare, Gowalla, etc. Facebook has half a billion users. This takes things to a whole new level.
Now, not all of those users are using Places or even Facebook on mobile devices, but that doesn’t mean these users won’t see updates about people checking into your business from their friends.
For the people that do use Places from their mobile devices, they’re presented with a list of nearby locations to check into any time they push the Places link. If you’re nearby, that means you. Clearly this opens a huge window for enticing customers to check into your place. You can offer discounts or other offers/incentives for some pretty good branding and word-of-mouth marketing.
Once a person checks into your business, that is put into the news feed of all of their friends. Those friends (not to mention the person checking in) can then go to your Place page and “like” it. And there’s a much better chance your customers are Facebook users than Foursquare users.