23 Aug 10

Facebook Places Checks-in

By Laura Fenton, Trainee Digital Planner Buyer

Facebook has finally launched its much anticipated geo-location tool ‘Places’ - enabling its users to share their location with each other in real time.

Launched last week in the US on both Facebook’s iPhone app and advanced versions of its mobile site, there are also plans to roll the tool out across the globe in the very near future (according to Facebook’s official blog post http://blog.facebook.com/).

The service essentially enables users to ‘check-in’ to nearby locations such as shops, bars and restaurants via their mobile device. Once checked in to a place, this activity is automatically posted on the user’s News Feed – thus sharing their location with fellow Facebook users. Users can then see if any of their friends are nearby, based on their current location.

It was only a matter of time before Facebook finally unveiled their integrated geo-location tool. Now, the real question on everyone’s lips (other than the inevitable concerns over privacy) is whether geo-location start-ups such as Foursquare and Gowalla, who pioneered the ‘check-in’ idea, will be able to survive in the market now the behemoth of social networks has joined the party.

Despite Facebook’s arrival on the geo-location scene, Foursquare’s CEO Dennis Crowley seems confident of his company’s survival and pins their success on the differences between Foursquare – which offers a more game and voucher oriented experience to its users, in contrast to Facebook’s more singular purpose of enabling its users to share experiences.

It is perhaps too early to tell whether these differences will be enough to sustain start-ups such as Foursquare in the geo-location services market however it is quite likely the size and might of Facebook will spell some sort of trouble for other players in the geo-location services market. Let’s just hope, for Foursquare’s sake, that the story isn’t over just yet…