August 15, 2011 in Blog by Ken Theriot, Executive Director

Facebook Goes Local

Facebook recently confirmed that it had added the ability to direct Facebook Ads to specific zip codes. This increased functionality will be quite helpful to local businesses that wish to direct their efforts to a more specific geo-demographic area. A Facebook spokesperson told Mashable after the release, “The zip code targeting launched yesterday and this change was made due to requests for such a change”. This is an easy implementation by Facebook that will go a long way for helping smaller businesses to adopt a Facebook Ad Campaign strategy. With Google+ gaining in popularity and their business page functionality being ready for release, Facebook needs to do all of they can to deter any conversion of the potentially very-lucrative local business market that have recently started to adopt social media as a viable medium.

Google+ vs. Facebook

As Google+ looks to monetize their efforts through Social Media and take some of the spotlight from Twitter’s 200 million and Facebook’s 750 million + user base. On July 4th, Google suspended real-time searches when their contract with Twitter expired, which were displaying tweets from Twitter and limited content from Facebook. Google, obviously has no intentions of renewing it as I am sure they will roll out similar functionality with Google+. Google is a formidable opponent and no one knows this better than Zuckerberg so I would expect to see Facebook to step-up to the plate across the board as they ready for this Social Media battle.

Social Media Market

Ultimately, the social media sphere in its entirety will decide what the pecking order for these Internet giants will be. It is my belief that the user will be the victor in almost all outcomes as each company will look to deliver more compelling features to compete. However, it is important to keep track of what has been a public relations nightmare for most of all the social media giants, privacy. Privacy concerns for all of the big guys has been a consistent problem that will most likely not go away without but they will continued to get worked out in the market as the advocates keep them in check.