Facebook Places and Foursquare
August 27, 2010Recently, I was discussing the recent changes to Facebook with them adding Facebook Places to their functionality on my friend, Russ Phillip’s Buzz feed, I added this comment:
What really happens with Foursquare, and will more than likely be the case, is that the people who check in are going to check in 5+ times a day are going to be 80% of the check-ins.
What Facebook has going for them is that other people are actually going to see those check-ins regardless of whether or not those other people are checking in as well.
While people are still very wary of check-in services (privacy, etc), I think that this broadcasting on someone’s Facebook newsfeed will quickly make people quickly adopt it. Either that, or it’s going to flop.
Facebook had a major win when they added pictures and applications, but there have been failures as well, like marketplace and gifts. In this case, I think either it’s going to be a major win or a total gimmick that people don’t use.
Regardless, Facebook definitely made the right move in adding geolocation services – with their already established, and more importantly, connected userbase, they have the biggest opportunity to make something out of it by far.
I wanted to elaborate on that and give some more information, so here it is…
Geolocation is clearly going to be a big development in web applications and software. And just like any new development, no one can really know if it’s going to be the “next big thing” or not. Similarly, no one knows exactly how to properly tap the next big development and ride that wave. People do it all the time, but there are plenty of people who miss the opportunity, or take the wrong approach.
Facebook is ensuring that they’re at least going to have a presence. There’s no guarantee of them being a dominant presence, or even a market leader. They are taking steps to make sure they’re there when something happens, however. And that is the best and smartest step they can take right now.
