Facebook Places vs. Google Places

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After noticing that Facebook places had gone live in Germany I though I'd do a comparison of Facebook Places and Google Places.
For this post I "checked in" while out for dinner on both services and include screen shots and notes.

Facebook Place
Facebook place pages concentric on "social" (no surprise there). There's limited information relating to the place.

• Phone number
• Adress with a link to Bing maps

I was interested to see an - "Is this your business?" link: claimed "places" are turned into Facebook pages, which are their business offering.


I makes sense (for Facebook) to try to encourage every business to move over to Facebook, but how many pages are people going to Fan realistically?

Google Place
Google primarily are about information, so it's no surprise that there is much more information about the restaurant on it's Google place page.

• Phone number
• Address
• Link to the business web site
• Directions / map
• Transit connections
• Reviews
• Details
• etc etc

Google also allows a business to "claim" the place page. Once claimed the owner can upload images, videos and coupons etc

Check-ins

Facebook mobile

Most people will have some idea of how Facebook operates as a "check in" service.

I think that you can only interact with check ins by your friends, though you can "see" a tally of the overall checkin numbers at any place.

The screen shot here is from Facebook's mobile application on the iPhone. There may be slight differences when using other mobile platforms like Android etc.

Google Place - Mobile Check In

Check ins for Google places on mobile happen on Google Buzz mobile.

Here you can see the check in Buzz post which includes a map and a link to the place page.

The big difference though is that when viewing Buzz mobile the place link goes to the mobile place page.

On the mobile Buzz page Buzz posts made at that location are also displayed on the mobile version of the place page.

Left is a screen shot of the Facebook "activity" tab for a place.

Right is the mobile version of the Google place page.
Note: the Google image here is long, as it's a stitched together version of a few different screen shots, as you have to scoll to see all the information on the page.

Activity at a place on Google mobile

As only a few (3) posts from any place will show on the mobile place page there is also a link to Buzz at that place: handy if there happens to be allot of conversation over different periods at a place.

Conclusion

Currently Facebook place pages are the weaker offering in terms of pure information.
Facebook seem to have the edge on "crowd sourced" information, and their approach may suit "places that you know" where you are more interested in who, instead of what.

With the launch of the Places API other location services (Foursquare etc?) may be looking to leverage Google data (which is itself mainly sourced from the web).

For small businesses I'd advise that you make sure you "claim" your place page.