Facebook has rolled out a new mobile feature that allows users to view recommendations about the places where they are from friends who have already been there.
Taking one more step closer to impinging on Yelp and Foursquare turf, which offer reviews and recommendations crowd-sourced from other users, the new feature called Place Tips will gather content about different places from a users' friends and will show that content, such as status updates and photos, to the user when Facebook detects that he is located in that place.
"Place Tips will show you fun, useful, and relevant info about the place you're at," says Mike LeBeau, product manager at Facebook, in a blog post.
For now, Place Tips is available only to iPhone users and is limited to the busiest spots in New York City. In the coming weeks, LeBeau says Place Tips will use a combination of the user's smartphone's cellular network, Wi-Fi, and GPS to detect the phone's signal in places like Times Square, Central Park, Brooklyn Bride, Statue of Liberty, and JFK International Airport.
Facebook will also be distributing Bluetooth beacons to select business locations, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dominique Ansel Bakery, Brooklyn Bowl, Strand Bookstore, Le Parker Meridien Hotel's burger joint, Pianos, and Veselka. These beacons will then be used to detect the Bluetooth signals of smartphones of owners who step inside these businesses.
LeBeau says Place Tips is currently in testing, thus the limited rollout. Users who will be chosen to test Place Tips will see the new feature show up at the top of their News Feed when they log in to Facebook at the place where the feature is enabled. They can choose to ignore the feature or they can tap it open to bring up cards featuring photos and other posts by friends who have visited the place.
For instance, if a user takes a cronut trip to Dominique Ansel Bakery, the Bluetooth beacon there will detect his phone's Bluetooth signal, provided it is turned on of course, and will dig up the posts made by that user's friends who have been to the bakery before. Place Tips will also include information from the Dominique Ansel Bakery Facebook page to include its own posts, such as popular menu items and upcoming events.
LeBeau stresses that Place Tips is optional. Users can turn off the new feature in their settings menu or choose to turn off recommendations about certain places. He also says Place Tips only works if the user has allowed Facebook to access his location. It will not automatically post to News Feed about users' activity on Place Tips.
