Facebook Places remains promising. It allows Facebook users to ‘check in’ to local destinations on Facebook and it allows businesses to reward Facebook visitors with discounts, coupons and freebies.

However, it’s been more than six months since Facebook announced Places and many of the promises offered by Facebook regarding Places remain unfulfilled. Facebook said it would become easy for businesses to create, manage, and merge Places pages with the existing Facebook pages. It’s not.

When places rolled out, Facebook promised to provide a bulk management tool for brands with several locations. This hasn’t happened. Adding places remains a barrier for businesses with multiple locations. It requires being physically present at each location with a Facebook supported device. New places are immediately visible to Facebook users and are owned by Facebook until the business goes through a second, more arduous process to claim them. Each Place must be claimed separately and requires individual verification by phone or by providing related ownership.

For businesses that already have an active Facebook Fan page, the addition of a separate Place page is typically undesirable. It confuses customers and splinters brand-related activity. To address this problem, Facebook told businesses that it would be possible to merge Facebook Places with their existing brand pages. While it is possible to merge a SINGLE PLACE PAGE with A SINGLE FAN PAGE, the results of doing so are discouraging: Custom tabs are removed. So is the ability to specify a ‘landing tab’ for the new, merged page. Instead, tabs from the Fan Page are converted to left-hand page links and the Bing-generated map becomes the required landing tab. Business owners are frustrated.

“I didn’t ask to merge — Facebook just did it to us,” said Mary Sisson, a frustrated Fan Page administrator. “Now we have no permanent information on our stores and a map leading to the store we’re closing. We’ve lost our widely-publicized Facebook address. And there’s no way I can see to edit anything. Extremely frustrating.”

Business owners also complain about losing page reports and Fan Page photo albums after merging pages. To address concerns, Facebook added the ability to ‘unmerge’ combined Place/Fan pages — but results seem to vary among those who abandon Facebook’s failed merging process.

“My business page went missing after unmerging Places.” said Brad Olson. “First the page disappeared then the Place. The ‘fans’ were transfered to a new page – but not at my Username and two years of work and galleries are gone. Any solution to restore this?”

Despite an outpouring of criticism for the way Facebook rolled out Places, many businesses remain hopeful about Places. More than 200 million active Facebook users connect to the site through their mobile devices, according to Facebook. And, people that use their mobile devices are also twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

That is why businesses are eager to leverage aspects of Places that work, such as the ‘deals’ feature. It allows businesses to reward Places page visitors with instant deals upon check in. They can offer discounts, gifts with purchases, rewards for bringing friends, rewards for customer loyalty (based # of visits) and pledges of charitable donations for customer visits.

Businesses are frustrated and hopeful when it comes to Places. It has everyone asking Facebook, “Where are you taking Facebook Places?”

Checking In with Facebook Places

We’ve talked about the benefits of Facebook Places for businesses… Here’s a look at benefits of Places for Facebook users… beyond deals. Enjoy!