Facebook is about to become a more serious competitor to Yelp and Foursquare. Now when you walk into a business, the suitably named “Place Tips” feature will pop up recommendations about the business.
When Facebook sees you’re at a business, you’ll receive a notification you can launch to view information cards about the place, including posts and photos from your friends. You’ll also get information on things such as the most popular menu items and upcoming events.
The information may also appear atop your news feed when you’re walking around near the establishment. The feature is turned on by default, so you’ll have to turn it off manually (under the “location” portion of your settings menu) if you find it annoying. Facebook at least gives you some granular control over which places you’d like to remove from the feature.
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Currently the feature is rolling out slowly to specifc areas of high activity, like Central Park or Times Square in New York City. Facebook uses information from your wireless carrier, Wi-Fi and GPS to pinpoint your location, but the social network is even testing out Bluetooth connectivity via beacons at businesses to provide more accurate location details.
While Yelp certainly has dominance over business recommendations (in the US, at least), turning on the feature by default will certainly make users pay more attention to Facebook’s offering. Whether users actually keep it on, however, remains to be seen.
➤ Introducing Place Tips in News Feed [Facebook]
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