Facebook has just extended its reach in the Indian market with its new venture of offering local businesses information accessible via facebook.com/services. The social network’s hyperlocal listing of service providers include listing of over 80 services ranging from plumbing, event planners, health, financial, beauty, home care, pet services and DIY services with user ratings. The service allows user to select a particular area and the service type to get the desired results.
As per a report, Facebook has over 2 million registered vendors and businesses in the SME sector on its platform. With this integration, Facebook can help those vendors reach the right audience and also the user would able to filter, and see the right seller.
The service will help the users find the best local services and organisations based on their reviews and ratings on Facebook with the businesses phone numbers, website links and work timings. However, users will not be able to make bookings and will be directed to the website, phone number, or email linked to the service.
Facebook has been testing this feature since November last year and had already launched the portal in the US market. In India, the new service will compete with some known names such as UrbanClap, QuickrServices, Zopper, Mr. Right etc. These platforms charge a small fee from the businesses to be featured on their platform. However at this stage we are not sure of how Facebook will handle the monetary aspects of these new services. As noted, Facebook is the largest social network in the world and it’s quite logical for the company to enter the hyperlocal arena.
[source :-in.techradar]