Last week, Facebook rolled out their much anticipated new feature, Places. Facebook Places allows users to check-in to locations like restaurants, bars, shops and businesses directly from Facebook’s mobile application for iPhone or via the web. Businesses claim their “Place” and can sync it with their existing Facebook Fan Page to add yet another dimension to a user’s experience. Will Facebook Places catch on with users and benefit businesses? How will it fit in to the arsenal of existing location based services already established with social media users?
Facebook is solidly established as a content sharing social platform. It has, by far, the largest user base of any social media service out there with 500 million registered users. That said, it is still unclear if Facebook can become a leader in the world of geo-location.
Facebook is not only a place for friends to connect with each other, but also a place for individual users and brands to engage in conversation. In that regard, Places seems like a natural step for Facebook. Location based social networking enables real-time, real-world connections to be brought online and continued as larger more long term conversations.
The approach Facebook took with Places is risky, especially given the manner in which the public responded to recent efforts to make the platform, by default, more public and more open. Places includes an automatic opt-in which allows a user’s friends to check the user in to a location. If a user does not want their friends to have the ability to check them in to Places, they must disable the feature through their Privacy Settings. Location based platform foursquare takes a different approach.
Rather than making a user’s current location public as the default setting, foursquare offers their users more control. Through foursquare, users have granular control over how public each check-in is. Foursquare users have the ability to share, or not share, their check-ins through Facebook, Twitter or the foursquare network.
Foursquare is already the clear leader in the location based market. Interestingly, the day that Facebook announced Places, foursquare saw the highest number of new user sign ups ever. The public is ready to embrace location based services, but will Facebook be the platform of choice?
Facebook’s launch of Places is the latest entry into location based check-in services. Don’t be too quick to write off other location based leaders such as foursquare and Gowalla. Just like Google, Facebook may beem infallible in their core business. Google has tried three times to enter into social media with Orkut, Wave and Buzz. Each time, Google been disappointed with adoption rates, at least in the United States. Could Places be Facebook’s location-based Achilles Heel? Is Places the ‘Wave’ of the future?
By Emily Gibian
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One Comment (Leave a Reply)
It’s interesting you bring up the bit about Google and their previous social media attempts. Does anyone remember Google’s “Open Social?” The API to bring all the social networks together (in widget form) onto an existing website/web application (etc) turned into—what? I’d not kept up with their progress until recently, and according to the Open Social Blog (http://blog.opensocial.org/) it doesn’t seem like much movement is happening – not that Google’s promoting, at least.
Should both Facebook and Google just stick to their specialization?
That said, Places still fits under Facebook’s purpose (sharing) and Open Social/Google APIs/Social Networks still fit under Google’s mission (to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful).
Furthermore, it’s interesting to note parallels of Google and Facebook’s services:
– Google has “Google Places”
– Facebook uses “Bing & Derive” as their search engine (for web results)
– Google Accounts and Facebook Connect are both commonly used (and interchangeably, too) as single-sign-on services for third party web applications.
To your point: I think the success of Facebook Places is dependent on local businesses claiming their Facebook Places and integrating it with their current social media campaign. Otherwise, who cares about another check-in opportunity if there’s no buy-in or interaction from the brand (the user is checking-in to)?