With all the talk about the 'massive' potential of Facebook Places to marketing and advertising, what is the significance of this new tool to the newspaper industry?

With just a little imagination, news providers could jump on the band wagon, especially as current hyperlocal trends already make news dissemination for a specific location easier. Starbucks for example, has launched a page in collaboration with some newspapers where customers can access local news. With Facebook Places, this is going to be possible at all venues. Imagine the unlimited possibilities if after checking into a place, a user can then access news items specific to that environment. Reaching out to consumers with location information is not a new idea and some newspaper houses are already working with similar application, Foursquare.

The Places tool, currently available only in the US, enables users to check into a venue, making their location visible on Facebook. The advantage of this, according to its developers, is that friends will no longer miss others when they are at the same venue. A user can also check friends into a location. Though there have been privacy concerns about the tool, Facebook assures everyone that privacy settings can be controlled to restrict the new application.

According to Brandrepublic, Facebook initially claimed there were no plans to work with brands, "describing the service purely as a way for users to let their friends know where they are located and what they are doing." However, that stance seems to have changed as there is now a definite consideration towards building "interesting features for the future."

And if the future lies in tailoring, as Eric Schmidt claims, then Facebook, with over 500 million users and the Places application, may just make it easier for news outlets to do this more effectively.

Source: Brandrepublic, The Facebook Blog.