Facebook Places Launches for iPhone, Challenges Foursquare, Gowalla (
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Facebook Aug. 18 unveiled its long-awaited geotagging service, an effort
that could move the market for location-based services forward considerably even
as it threatens startups such as Foursquare and Gowalla.
Similar to Foursquare and Gowalla, Facebook Places lets users "check
in" to a location via their smartphone to share their locations in real
time with Facebook friends. Places will tell those users if their friends are
nearby in case the parties want to meet up.
Currently, Places is available to those who use the most recent version of
the Facebook application for Apple's iPhone. Users may also access Places from
the touch.facebook.com mobile Website from browsers that support HTML5
and geolocation.
Here's how it works. Smartphones users will go to Places on the iPhone
application or touch.facebook.com site and then tap the "Check In"
button.
They should see a list of places near them and will pick the best match
based on their location. If users don't see their location, they can search for
it or simply add it.
Once users check in, it will create a story in their friends' News Feeds and
surface in the Recent Activity section on the page for that place.
When users check in, they can post a status update along with their check-in
to tell people what they are doing in addition to where they are doing it. They
may also tag friends who are with them.
While Foursquare and Gowalla already blazed the check-in trail by offering
badges, rewards and coupons from business, both companies' social networks are
small potatoes compared with Facebook.
Foursquare enjoys some 2.7 million users, while Gowalla has close to 1
million. Both networks are flyweights compared with Facebook's massive network
numbers north of 500 million users.
Facebook Places is currently available only in the United
States, so Foursquare and Gowalla only have
to compete with a network of about 100 million users.
Obviously, this is an untenable position for the companies, so they partnered
with Facebook for Places, according to TechCrunch.
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