Social media giant Facebook continues to grow larger than anyone thought possible, and buried in the last round of stats is this important tidbit, thanks to InsideFacebook:
Pages that Facebook defines as local businesses went from 700,000 actives to 1.5 million (since December). In other words, local businesses comprised half of the overall increase in active Pages over the last couple of months.
Keep in mind, these are active pages, not just created pages. Facebook is becoming a local advertising powerhouse without attracting that much attention. You may remember last year, Borrell Associates said that 74% of Facebookâs ad revenue in 2009 will come from local businesses and advertisers. The more businesses that actively update their Pages, the more compelled they’ll be to promote them via Facebook Ads.
And Facebook has hinted at beefing up more local context and features on the site, which if they do it well, it’s not unreasonable to believe that Facebook could become the second biggest local ad company on the web, right behind Google.
