Facebook Places: Marketing tool or educational asset?

UK's Facebook Places ad campaign guides students to an educational web site.
UK's Facebook Places ad campaign guides students to an educational web site.

The University of Kentucky, if all goes according to the campus’s marketing plan, could pop up in 1.3 million Facebook news feeds during the fall semester—and students might just learn something about maintaining online privacy in the process.

The Lexington, Ky., university placed six-foot wooden Facebook Places logos in six campus locations with the heaviest foot traffic to encourage students to “check in” using Facebook’s geo-tagging application, which lets users show friends where they are—the campus library, for instance.

Places, which is similar to geo-tagging services Yelp, Gowalla, Booyah, and Foursquare, launched in August and drew skeptical reviews from many in higher education. Facebook users must opt into Places before the application displays the person’s location.…Read More

Facebook Places could meet skepticism on college campuses

About 5 percent of U.S. web users have used a location-based online service.
About 5 percent of U.S. web users have used a location-based online service.

Facebook’s opt-in feature that lets friends check each other’s locations could be useful for colleges and universities tracking the most popular campus destinations, but social media experts say students haven’t yet embraced geo-tagging in any form.

Facebook announced Aug. 18 that its 500 million members can now use the company’s Places application on their smart phones to tell friends where they are—a local restaurant or movie theater, for example—much like the geo-tagging services Yelp, Gowalla, Booyah, and Foursquare.

Places requires a free download update to the Facebook mobile application, and once users “check in,” they can show their Facebook friends where they are. Members can block the general Facebook population from seeing their location.…Read More