Will Facebook buy FourSquare, what about McDonalds?

McDonalds Teams with Facebook

McDonalds Teams with Facebook

So apparently Facebook will team up with Ronald Mcdonald and the rest of the Fry Guys to implement a Facebook app that allows users to “check in”. Not only does this sound like the first public announcement utilizing Facebook’s new Geolocation feature, but also like the opening volley shot over the bow of FourSquare, the “resident” geolocation “check in” service of record. This not only raises some interesting conversational pieces about other uses of Geolocation on Facebook, but also a bigger question.Should Facebook compete with FourSquare?  Is there enough pie there for everyone to be fat and happy?  Or should they save themselves a lot of trouble re-inventing what appears to be a legitimate working wheel?  So far a local tab has been spotted on McDonalds Facebook page asking for your zip code.  This begs the question of how Facebook will handle public updates, feed integration and privacy issues with their new shiny location based toy.

Facebooks McDonalds Page Local Tab

Facebooks McDonalds Page Local Tab

Also, will people feel secure enough to actually let people know where they are?  I realize Facebook connects friends, but there are plenty of profiles with “friends” that might be for a common goal of raising your online game status, things like Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc.  How many of those people are in your Facebook circle?  Maybe there needs to be  a way to block them from seeing certain things.  Currently you can adjust privacy settings and put friends into groups, but applying different privacy settings for different groups I don’t think is active yet.  This would be a good idea for Facebook to take into account when trying to generate as many users of this product as possible.  But we all know how good they are, like, at that.

[tags]McDonalds, Facebook, Social Media, Geolocation Services, FourSquare, Simon Search Marketing, Location Based Services[/tags]

Technorati Tags: facebook, FourSquare, Social Media

About Geoff Simon

Geoff is owner/operator of Simon Search Marketing. He graduated with a B.S. in Business Administration from California State Polytechnic University in 2003 and got an account coordinator job with GREY Global's west coast direct marketing arm (Grey Direct West, now G2 Direct & Digital) working for Bank of Americas online banking division. From there Geoff has worked in a search marketing capacity for companies including Intermark Group, Disney Interactive Media Group, SSPR and others. Brands worked on include Disney Family, Toyota Dealers Association, National Geographic, Red Bull USA Events, That '70s Show and Carsey Werner.
Geoff likes ice-hockey, is a Chicago native and proud dad to his almost 1-year old son Cyrus.
Find Geoff on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, or follow his Twitter handle @geoff_simon

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