Scoble’s posts usually evoke a lot of debate. His latest post is no different. This time round though, I agree with him - at least most of what he’s saying. The basic premise of Scoble’s post is that Facebook is  the new white pages - what it really needs to make money is  to involve local businesses and enable them to better target the folks on its service.

Which one made AT&T tons of money? Hint: the Yellow Pages. I paid thousands of dollars a month to have our camera store advertisement in there. It generally paid off by bringing us tons of customers. After all, when you needed a camera store, or a dentist, plumber, lawyer, or a variety of other things, you’d look in the yellow pages and the one with the best looking ad got our business.

Now, let’s go back to Facebook. What’s the equivilent of the “best looking ad?” The business who has the best reviews. That’s a shift. A major one. Up to today Facebook has built the equivilent of the white pages: a site of people, but not of businesses. Soon Facebook will have tons of businesses on the social graph, but it needs to grab as much of that space as absolutely possible before others, like Twitter, get into the game.

I would tend to agree with his assessment. The potential for Facebook to help local businesses run targeted, localized marketing campaigns is huge. But the question is, does it really need Yelp for this? Yelp is big only in the US - that too primarily San Fran. Outside of the US, there’s Qype in Europe? Why Yelp and not Qype then? Facebook has 150 million plus users, the world over. How then do you involve local businesses from the many countries that Facebook has its users in? And will paying the 500 million odd that  Facebook would need to pay for Yelp, really add that much value to them?

We at Locomi, started off with a similar premise - that local businesses + Facebook was a huge opportunity - which is primarily why we decided on it as our first platform of choice. Our focus was and is primarily - Asia. We already seeing a number of people interacting, discussing the businesses in their city. Like a restaurant you have been to in your locality recently? Review it on our app and all your friends who have added the app would know. The viral nature of the platform allows for huge exposure to local businesses in a manner that’s unprecedented.

We are still figuring our way out, but Scoble tells us we are on the right track. And that’s reassuring.