This is one of those bytes of news that falls under the "duh" category. Facebook
just announced that restaurants in the US and Canada can now add menus to their social pages. Using
SinglePlatorm from Constant Contact, an online listing service (the same service which provides menus on Foursquare and Yelp!), restaurants
can upload their menus to Facebook. The real news behind this story is not the headline, but rather, the implication, as Facebook increasingly encompasses the details of our everyday lives.
Online menus are not new on social media, as
FourSquare,
Yelp and even
Google have included the information in their products for some time. As
Mashable points out, restaurants have always been able to upload a simple image of their menu to Facebook for patrons to explore (a method recommended to restaurants outside the US and Canada, who now have the ability to upload a PDF version of their menu in place of the SinglePlatform option). It is not the menus that are of interest to Facebook, more important is what can now be done with those menus. As
Mashable notes, this new menu integration could pave the way for direct online ordering via Facebook. Users can already make reservations via
OpenTable links on a restaurants mobile Facebook page, so being able to order online would be a natural progression.
The notable changes will come in stages. With online ordering looming on the horizon, it is easy to see how the capabilities could be integrated into Facebook's other useful features. For example, Facebook users can add events to the social site and invite their Facebook friends. What if those events were connected to a reservation at the venue (a restaurant in this example) so that when a user RSVPs for an event, the restaurant is notified and can update the booking? The event listing could also add the restaurant's menu to the event page, helping invitees decide whether or not to attend, and possibly allowing guests to pre-order dishes to speed up service.
What do you think? Is this a natural evolution Facebook's place in our increasingly digital lives, or do Yelp! and other services already have the bases covered? Let us know what you think via Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Source:
Eater,
Mashable,
Image Credit (Flickr)
Tablebases.com
