This week at their Palo Alto headquarters, Facebook revealed details of their mobile strategy to extend their presence with three mobile initiatives:
Deals Taking on Foursquare and Gowalla, Facebook has officially released “Deals” allowing businesses to engage and interact with nearby foot traffic. A business has access to four types of deals: Individual, Friend, Loyalty and Charity. Deals are free (for now) but Facebook is hoping businesses will extend their deals by advertising with them.
Places API – Facebook has opened access to its Write API and Search API to Facebook Places for all developers. Along with the Read API that was released in August, a 3rd party app can not only consume data from Places, it can now write back to it (ie. update a user¹s status) and access facebook’s venue database returning not only locations by proximately but relevance as well.
Single Sign On for Mobile Apps Now users can login in quickly and easily to mobile apps with Facebook¹s single sign on. It’s currently available on all versions of Android apps and iPhones that support multitasking as long as the Facebook app is installed on your device. Also this week, Facebook released new updates to its iPhone & Android apps both include an update to its places feature, incorporating deals, ability to add photos and expanded friend tagging.
