As a social media marketer, I can say with certainty that pictures of food generate high levels of engagement for the right clients. Now, the love affair between social media and food porn moves on to the next level. OpenTable has launched a partnership with Facebook allowing mobile users to reserve a table using restaurants’ Facebook pages.
Here’s the skinny: visit the restaurant’s mobile Facebook page and select the time you are hoping to dine. Boom. Dunzo. (Well, practically.) The in-page service defaults on today’s date and a party of two, but these are customizable at the click of a button.
For those of you concerned about privacy, Facebook will not share any of your dining plans to your News Feed. Making the reservation is seamless, without having to launch the OpenTable app or sign in to OpenTable itself. You do not have to be an existing OpenTable member to take advantage of this feature.
“The update represents a new way for people to discover and book great dining experiences, all within the Facebook mobile app. With more than 800 million people accessing Facebook via a mobile device every month, users are engaging with pages on mobile more than ever before. To improve the mobile pages experience for brands and customers alike, we are continuing to work with key partners to help people discover and engage with businesses,” says a spokesperson for Facebook.
This strengthens the partnership between OpenTable and Facebook, who announced in February of this year OpenTable’s “Places I’ve Eaten” app which allows people to share and gain intel of their friends’ knowledge of local dining scenes.