With Facebook ramping up its geolocation efforts to combat pressure from the likes of Gowalla, Foursquare and many others, the company announced today that it’s working with McDonalds to create a campaign to reward customers for “checking in” at locations using Facebook’s new geolocation functionality.
The two companies are working together to build an app that will let users check in at a restaurant and receive rewards such as coupons for featured products a few days later. With Facebook betting its future on geolocation, McDonalds wants to be first on the list to take full advantage, for good reason.
Facebook has more than 450 million users worldwide, and around 100 million of them update their status from mobile devices. Flipping the switch on geolocation positions Facebook well ahead of competitors in the space that have been facilitating geolocation for a while now. With a built-in user-base of over 100 million active users, Facebook is definitely on to something.
The question remains, however, of how privacy will play into the equation. With so many users “checking-in” at so many places, Facebook will collect and retain a ton of user-information. It’s not quite clear how Facebook will deal with this. Still, geolocation is undoubtedly the future, and McDonalds wants to waste no time in being a front-runner.
