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As a Hoboken based business, we use Yelp often. Is Facebook about to replace that?

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Hoboken, NJ is an amazing place to work and live. Combine that with a love of all things lunch – and you’ll understand our affinity for Yelp.

Anyone who is familiar with Hoboken, NJ (and if you’re not, come visit!) understands the importance of Yelp. While there are tried-and-true places to eat and shop, there are new places opening up all the time. So before we spend our much-valued lunch time disappointed by an unknown offering, we turn to Yelp first to see what the buzz is.

Of course Drummond St. Strategy is on Yelp (albeit mostly for SEO reasons, to be honest) but is all that about to go away? According the The next Web, Facebook is quietly testing a new feature called “Professional Services” which will let users find local businesses.

Right now, it has not been officially announced by Facebook and reports are coming in that it’s a rather simple algorithm that shows search results by city and by business type. So, for example, a user can search for “Dentists in Hoboken” or (and this is more likely the case for us DStreeters) “best sandwiches in Hoboken”.

Currently this feature is only available on desktop but, of course this is Facebook we’re talking about so, no doubt, the functionality will only continue to improve over time.

So, as long as Facebook’s Professional Services can match Yelp, then I guess our culinary curiosity will be satisfied. More to the point, it will mean our SEO strategy, both for ourselves and our clients, will need to adapt to include Professional Services as a major player. Positive reviews will become more important and it will mean one more social media platform to monitor.

The big question is: what does this mean to our beloved Foursquare?