I think it’s a matter of consumer data. If you can track people and their habits, you can market accordingly. I’m sure FB is turning that data into money down the line; I don’t imagine it being very different than what Google does with its search data. Toss in advertising money and it’s a grand prix for marketing!

Don’t see it as spending money on a program. This is marketing. When you give something to them for checking in, you can give them flyers, pamphlets, calendars, and other advertisements for the library. This is strategic marketing, plain and simple.

This, though, seems like a nice counterpoint to the metal-lockers post, in that it addresses the question of, how do we actually get people through the door? And it might be something that disproportionately appeals to people who aren’t coming to the library right now.

That said, I don’t have a smartphone so I don’t do Foursquare or any of that (and Facebook also kind of creeps me out), so I don’t know what the appeal is anyway. But some of those badges are pretty cute. Can you go on a library bender?

Come to think of it, with the Deals thing — what’s in it for *Facebook*? I mean, I presume that what’s in it for them with the Gap or whoever is that FB gets to collect more interesting data on people, which it can then sell to advertisers. (Or, if not the data per se, the ability to have particular actions triggered by FB data.) But libraries aren’t really in the advertising business. What do libraries offer FB to make it worth their time? Do they have the money? And if they did, would it be consistent with privacy concerns? And if libraries can get in on Deals without paying FB…who *is* paying FB to get to use data about what people do in libraries?