What Facebook Local Could Look Like

Facebook is going local, well at least its advertising revenue is. According to a recent report by Borrell Associates, 74% of Facebook’s advertising comes from local businesses. That’s a great statistic but one that makes me want to ask so many questions.

Where are the local features?

If most of Facebook’s revenue is coming in from local businesses than how come there aren’t many, if any, local features? Restaurant listings, menus, ratings and reviews seem like a perfect fit. Concerts and events are an easy next step and go hand in hand with a strong revenue opportunity via affiliate advertising. Hyper local news and information would also be welcomed and I would argue that aggregation would be a great method to provide it. The features could go on but I think small business listings and reviews, local events, and local news/information are the three key places to start.

How do you build a local salesforce across the nation?

If Facebook were to build a more localized platform it might find it difficult to assemble a sales force that could educate small businesses in each market. One solution can actually be found on the college campuses where Facebook got its start. You might recall that Facebook began as a social network for college students and quite quickly had a great footprint on almost every university campus across the nation.

College campuses are an ideal location to start local advertising. I remember my campus at Rutgers University essentially was the entire town of New Brunswick, NJ and every small business within it somehow made an attempt to cater to the college students.

So, start a sales force with the same students that turned Facebook into a household name by picking out a handful of bright kids, arm them with sales material, let them loose on local business owners, and allow them to gain real experience while earning either a cut of each sale or a fixed fee.

Photo via Flickr: Gernot Poetsch

This might sound like a crazy idea but there is a small company south of Facebook called Apple that actually supports this exact approach. The Apple Campus Representative program assembles a group of die hard fanboys/girls at campuses across the nation, hands them the latest Macbooks and iPods, and makes the responsible for events and demonstrations at student centers and other key locations to encourage other students to buy Mac.

Does Facebook need better allies?

During the last Presidential race, Facebook proved its value and ability to influence and disseminate campaign information. It was a big step for social networking and even CNN caught the bug by collaborating with Facebook to provide over 27 million viewers the chance to stream President Obama’s inauguration speech with their friends’ status updates streaming along side.

I think it’s time for Facebook to work with governments to develop some clever features and services that inform, improve, and simplify each and every one of our lives. We’re becoming smarter more socially aware citizens and it’s time for social networking to grow up a little too. Neighborhood watch groups, virtual town halls, event registration and information, town alerts… the list could go on and on.

Oh and while you’re working with governments to enhance the platform I’d take a close look at the massive education institutions whose students flocked to you and see if they need help as well. You created fan pages, news feeds, and Christian singles ads when you could have worked on classrooms, collaborative tools, and promoted worthy organizations and causes instead. Thanks alot.

What gives?

Local is an extremely strong and untapped market for all internet companies to start paying more attention to. Over the past few months, I’ve met with many smart companies like Outside.in and Hapnin that are working on ways to provide local news and information in a smarter more accessible platform. I think Facebook has and has had the opportunity to be a big part of the local movement on the web. I hope they jump onboard soon but if they don’t that’s ok too, someone else will.

So what do you think? Am I completely out of my mind for suggesting this approach for Facebook? Should Facebook go down the local route? Or maybe by some stroke of luck you might actually agree with me. I’d love to hear your thoughts either way.