Report: Facebook to allow geo-location status updates
Published March 09, 2010
Status updates on wildly popular social networking service Facebook will soon have the ability to include location data from GPS-enabled smartphones or netbook PCs, letting users know where their friends are, according to the New York Times.
The Times reports that Facebook is planning to unveil the new feature at its yearly f8 developer conference, citing anonymous sources "who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss unannounced services."
Officially, however, Facebook refused to confirm the existence of the new feature. Spokeswoman Meredith Chin told the Times that "we're constantly experimenting with new things around here, but we don't have any details to share right now."
If local advertising and social media have been anointed as the next big things in creative marketing, this combination should be enough to get digital marketing professionals salivating. Having frequently updated location data for even a small fraction of Facebook's 400 million users would be an invaluable asset to any strategic marketing planning firm, and geo-targeting social media advertisements would greatly assist integrated marketing communications.