How Facebook's New Place Pages Cater to Diners, Restaurants

Recent upgrades to Pages compete with apps like Yelp and GrubHub.

In addition to helping you reconnect with that kid from your high school English class, Facebook wants to become further involved in other aspects of your life. According to Business Insider, the social media network has announced it is updating its Pages in an attempt to get more users to connect with local businesses such as restaurants and bars. The update is the biggest in three years for Pages, and it aims to make it easier for companies to advertise their services.

For the restaurant world, these updates could be game changers. With the use of the network's new call-to-action button, users will be able to contact restaurants directly from their Facebook page. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg explained Facebook's mission at a recent event held at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters, "Our mission is to help connect everyone in the world. Businesses often depend on connecting. That's where Facebook comes in. If you can set up a Facebook profile, you can set up a Page."

Through industry-specific sections, restaurants can now include their menus and even list goods that can be purchased through their Pages. This could allow Facebook to replace apps like Yelp, GrubHub, and others that are dedicated to helping users connect with local restaurants. To this effect, executives say they are also working on improving the way users search on Facebook so that when they search a word like "restaurants," a list will show up.

The announced Pages update comes a couple of weeks after Facebook announced a new virtual assistant that will help users make restaurant reservations, among other things.

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