The service will allow users to share where they are while on the move. The service is currently restricted to the US, however the company is hoping to extend this to its 500 million members as soon as possible.

Places will also allow you to tag your friends with your current location, as long as they’ve also ‘checked-in’ at the same location.

It’s an interesting development for Facebook, as it allows the site to publish real-time activities of its members, rather than simply the short updates and photos that are generally published after the event. It’ll also provide them with a lot more information on your general activities outside of work and home.

Vice president of product Chris Cox told BBC News “This third place is the one we end up talking about a lot. I went to a movie, I saw a band, I went to a bar. So much of the interesting stuff in our lives happens in this small amount of time and we want to make that come alive.”

Foursquare offers a similar service, offering users the ability to gain points and virtual badges after checking in to certain venues. Some quick-thinking companies have seen the potential for advertising and promotional purposes with the services, particularly as it provides an excellent opportunity for targeting customers when they’re actually near the venue. Domino’s Pizza came up with the concept of offering a free pizza to the ‘Mayor’ of each store, which they claim increased their profits significantly and expanded their current online community.

Foursquare and Facebook Places also expands on the theory that community recommendations are much more successful than standard advertising. If your friends love something and you see them visiting often, you’re more likely to visit too, right?

The main criticism of location-based services is the concern over privacy, and Facebook has been quick to ensure that users have as much access to their privacy settings as possible.

So, are these new location-based services the future for targeted and community-based advertising?

Discussion participants were FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz, and the panellists included:

• Steve Rubel, Senior VP and Director of Insights, Edelman Digital
• Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford Motor Company
• Jennifer Cohen, co-founder and president of Something Creative LLC

You can download the discussion from FIR Live #18 – August 14, 2010: Web pages or Facebook?

The Idea Agency: A virtual creative agency gave children the opportunity to work on creative briefs for ChildLine from creating slogans to web comics. Our team moderated content posted to the campaign’s Habbo, Piczo and Bebo pages.

Thanks to Tom for writing this one up.

Thank you to one of our community managers, Frank, who wanted to share his thoughts on the impact of The Times paywall – Darika

So The Times & Sunday Times has begun to charge users for accessing its online content.  Prior to this, the Financial Times was the only UK paper to do so.

This is an interesting development as The London Evening Standard announced that it had recently broke even, which is remarkable for a paper that is freely handed out around London.  Major advertising leading up the World Cup may have played a part so time will tell if this continues.

One wonders what impact the daily charge of £1 (£2 per week) to access the Times will have on exposure from a marketing point of view. Users may well choose not to pay, what admittedly is not a large amount, whilst there is a wealth of alternatives still available to the reader.

The key development will be who moves next and also charges for online access.

Where do you sit? Will you pay?

[Image: Giuseppe Bognanni]

Download our FREE resources on using Facebook for business including advice from Head of International Business Development for Facebook, Christian Hernandez.

No registration required. Just click on the hyperlink of the resource you want and a new window will open.

Available:

1. Facebook presentation about Brands on Facebook
   
2. Protect your online brand reputation with Facebook page management (Dom Sparkes, Tempero)
3. Engagement: How to make a successful Facebook page (Josh March, iPlatform) PLUS info an intro to Conversocial and available packages
   
4. Case Studies from Blue Rubicon & Outside Line

A transcript from the night is also available via CoverItLive.

Facebook Page Management

Tempero now offers a range of tiered packages for Facebook page management providing brands with enhanced online brand protection within the social network.

Prices start from £750 month and include:

• Dedicated moderation resources 7 days per week
• Expert moderators with years of experience
• Multi-lingual across English, French, Italian, German, Spanish (additional languages on request)
• Ongoing advice and management support
• Monthly reporting
• Moderation software for profanity and keyword filtering outside moderation hours extending protection
• Professional indemnity insurance backed

Please contact us hello@tempero.co.uk to find out more.

How do you get ROI from a Facebook page?

How much management does a page really need?

We are aiming to put the big questions and more (unveiling super-cool new Facebook moderation and engagement management tool Conversocial) to the pros tonight.

The speakers will be:

• Christian Hernandez, International Head of Business Development for Facebook
• Dom Sparkes, MD of Tempero
• Joshua March, founder of iPlatform
• Richard Appleton, presenting a case study from Blue Rubicon
• Ronnie Brown, presenting a case study from Outside Line

You can find all these clever people on Twitter via this list  http://twitter.com/temperouk/fb4biz

The hashtag tonight is #fb4biz and we’ll be attempting to use coveritlive to capture some  chatter as well as posting a host of helpful resources online tomorrow for download.

A post over on Reputation Online ‘An interesting example of crisis management from Starbucks‘ received some comments on, well, comment moderation. Author Vikki Chowney noted that while well within their terms of use [and common sense] for deleting the comments, the brand could’ve posted something to explain what had happened and that the content was now removed. Apparently at the time there was a lot of online chatter discussing the issue but then the page appeared completely unaffected.

Most were in agreement, Starbucks did the responsible thing in removing the comments, but Community Management 101 would suggest that maybe they could’ve given all the members of the community a heads up – it only served to make them look great in terms of the speed of response!

[Via Drew Benvie]

We thought we’d round out the month with one event to rule them all – Facebook for Business.

As with previous events this one looks to be very popular with speakers from Facebook, some of the UK’s leading digital agencies, and a very special product announcement from developers the iPlatform…

Sign up here and if you can’t make it we’ll be posting content online after the event. Stay tuned.

[Image: Textually.org]

The study  is comparing users of Facebook and Twitter to examine the similarities and differences between the two, whilst looking at personality characteristics such as Extraversion, Narcissism, Sociability and Conscientiousness.

It’s currently in research stage with results hopefully available by mid-September (and we will be asking Andrew for permission to publish). Right now he needs people to participate so please take 10mins or so to fill out the survey. A small donation will be made to Cancer Research UK for each completed response received.

Take the 10min survey

Q: Which co-founder of a moderation company featured in the Jerusalem music video by Fat Les for Euro 2000?

A: Dominic Sparkes

See below @ 50secs and 120secs