Media attention
Location services are a widespread media coverage. Facebook announced this month that it has announced the "Conversations" promotional platform for local businesses that works with "Places". "Offers" are just the latest participants in increasingly crowded on-site services that already include Foursquare, Loopt, SCVNGR, Shopkick and many more.
Early stage
How to adopt these diverse applications is still in the early stages. According to the Pew Research study in September, only 4% of online adults use Foursquare or Gowalla to share. Some have started studying because they did not mention the Facebook "Places" (which was started during the test). It is also striking that the question Pew asked did not cover location-based shopping or promotional applications.
Many excitement
While these services do not yet reach mainstream acceptance, services (though relatively small base) have generated a lot of excitement. Foursquare has recently added that this 4 millionth member is only 50 days after reaching 3 million members. Undoubtedly, Facebook's participation will speed up interest and adoption.
Due to the promise of location services, some great players participated. When Facebook announced "Offers", it started with 22 premium partners. Gap issued 10,000 free blue jeans and then offered a 40 percent discount when someone looked at his business. North Face has donated $ 1 to sign up for a store (or signing in to a national park). Both McDonald's and Starbucks announced charity donations to sign into the store.
Offering site-based services such as Shopkick and checkpoints, shops, and brands, offer rewards. Best Buy and Macys as well as Kraft, Proctor and Gamble work with Shopkick to reward customers, encouraging access to the shop and scanning barcodes for some items. Checkpoints, an iPhone application launched in September that exceeded 100,000 downloads, as well as points and other benefits for scoring some product codes.
Privacy Services
Location Services I'm Going In Mainstream, you have to fight for privacy and security concerns, at least in a certain segment of your customers. A passionate online user said, "I do not like the radiation where we are or when my husband is over, just for security reasons." Perhaps the wildly popular Facebook will help place-based services to realize its enormous potential. As Sam Altman, Managing Director of Loopt, said: "Obviously the site is not a mainstream – it's still a young demographic phenomenon – but if anyone can change it, then Facebook is too."