Vendasta’s reputation software now pulls in business reviews from Facebook! Did that get you excited? It should have.

This is big news.

We are the first in the online reputation industry to pull in reviews from Facebook, alongside reviews from other top review sites like Yelp and Google+. Businesses can see what their customers (and potential customers) are saying about them all over the web from one central location. And as you can see from the headline, it is becoming increasingly important to manage Facebook reviews.

But Why Does This Matter?

In October of 2013, Facebook began quietly tiptoeing into Yelp and Google+ territory by adding reviews to their offering. Since they already have a massive user base — over 1.23 billion monthly active users — Facebook’s jump into reviews is likely to be a swan dive rather than a belly flop.

Business owners should be happy to see Facebook enter the game as well, since people are more likely to use their real identity to post reviews, meaning there will be less anonymous, conspicuous one-star ratings. And since the reviews are already posted on the social network, they are easier to share with friends and family, which people are more likely to trust than anonymous reviews.

With a Bright Local report confirming that over 85% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, up from 76% in 2012, it’s no wonder why Facebook would jump into the review game. While Google+ and Yelp have been battling it out for the marketshare, Facebook has slipped into the game and is quickly becoming a fierce competitor. Currently, Yelp exceeds Google+ on number of reviews and places reviewed, and Yelp tends to have nearly double the number of reviews than Google+ on places where they have the same business listings (PiperJaffray). While the talk of competition is mostly between Google+ and Yelp right now, Facebook has entered the game as a lively competitor, ready to let the others bicker while they take huge bites out of the growing market. In some business categories, Predict-it.com has found that there are four times more Facebook reviews than other sources.

Businesses and consumers are already on Facebook, so to use it as a consumer review platform seems intuitive. The average person spends about 15.5 hours a month on Facebook, and many consumers seek out current business information here rather than the company’s website. Consumers are more likely to get quick responses and meaningful interactions from a company’s Facebook page.