How to Claim Your business with Facebook Places if you own a business and haven't yet!

Facebook's launch of its new location based application - "Facebook Places" with Facebook Deals is one of the biggest apps ever launched for Facebook. They have been working up to this point for a long time. If you have a mobile Facebook app on your phone and have recently updated it, take a look at where the Facebook Places icon is. Yep, right in the center. Below, I actually have a link to a live, VERY candid audio interview with Mark Zuckerburg on the day of the announcement.

Statistics say that 9 out of 10 people now have Facebook on their mobile phone, so get ready for everyone you know to be "checking in" soon. I have a feeling the phrase "check in" or "checked in" will soon be as common as "text me" or "call me" is now. I can just see the conversation now going something like this: "You were at The Ram last night? Why didn't you check in?" Or "I saw that you checked in at the Ram last night, how long were you there? "

Damn, I wish I could go back to college...

Just by looking at your phone you can see where everyone in your social circle is hanging out, as long as they have checked in. There are quite a few location based services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Whererunow is about to launch locally, and many more. All these services do virtually the same thing that Facebook Deals does, however the one major exception is that 90% of people are on Facebook and about 1% of people are on these other applications.

So if you have a mobile phone and do not have access to Facebook Places I would suggest running to your nearest wireless store or kiosk and getting one!!

With Facebook Deals local businesses will be able to offer instant redeemable coupons to people who check in to their business, AND to people who are within a certain distance of their business. This technology has been being used for a while by various companies, but nobody with the network that can even hold a candle to Facebook has been doing it. This is why it hasn't been very successful yet, or created much of a buzz with the regular population.

But Facebook has been watching. And waiting. Until now.