As Facebook Places becomes a destination for brands and local businesses to connect with Facebook’s 500 million-plus members, there is a need for technologies that help businesses run promotions and track interactions with their Places pages. Context Optional, a SaaS offering that allows users to build, monitor and manage brand presence on Facebook, is debuting a customizable Facebook Places Check-In Leaderboard, a way for brands to recognize users who ‘check in’ to Facebook Places such as retail stores and restaurants.
Places Check-In Leaderboard allows guests who check in to various locations to claim ownership of said locations via specially-designated categories which are tied to frequency of check-ins. Brands who implement a Places Check-In Leaderboard will be able to create Leaderboard categories such as ‘High Roller’ and ‘Shop-a-holic’ and attach special deals and offers to Top Fans on the Leaderboard.
While this is a small feature, I’m sure we can expect many more Places-oriented offerings from Context Optional in the near future. The company recently acquired Buzzeo, a platform for Facebook application creation; and a customized application for retailers to connect with Facebook users.
Of course, it would also make sense for Facebook could start turning on these sort of marketing features for businesses, so Context Optional and others could face competition in the future.