Dinner and a show. Facebook is introducing new content and features to selected mobile Pages to make them more engaging and useful.
The company said this afternoon that it is integrating OpenTable booking into Facebook mobile Pages for restaurants in North America.
In addition, TV listings information will appear on TV and movie Pages.
In the latter case, “Listings will be based on your current time zone and include the channel name, air time and a description of the show or movie playing.”
In the case of OpenTable, users will be able to book restaurants directly through their mobile Facebook Pages, without going to another site or the OpenTable app.
Facebook said OpenTable booking will be available for “20,000 OpenTable restaurant customers across North America.”
Beyond the additional visibility and distribution for OpenTable and utility for Facebook, the deal comes on the heels of Yelp’s acquisition of OpenTable booking competitor SeatMe, which may have partly motivated it. OpenTable has/had a similar profile-page booking arrangement with Yelp.
The new TV content and reservations functionality give people additional reasons to use Facebook’s mobile apps with even greater frequency. Currently Facebook’s apps are dominant on iOS and Android both in terms of reach and time spent.
Their usage represents nearly one-quarter of all time spent with mobile apps.
Postscript: In addition to the above, Facebook’s iOS app (not Android right now) will gain the ability to search and click on hashtags. You search using a # and the relevant phrase to discover other posts tied to that hashtag. Alternatively you can just click on the hashtag to be taken to a public feed associated with that topic.
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