Why does Facebook make places of Foursquare in a Note

If Facebook is to eventually have to be made real.

I do not want a sarcastic way. I think that really is the most important result in the establishment Facebook page last night, I attended an event in the high office in Palo social networking giants.

The new feature allows people of Facebook iPhone or web browser location-aware, including the access, check-in and Facebook to share their current locations and see which friends have been recorded in the area. For mobile users on the location of the business and Foursquare Gowalla, based Yelp, and SCVNGR Booyah, which is not new.

: facebook-places

Even the largest of these new companies have only a few million users. Facebook has a half-billion, of which 150 million U.S., where sites will start the first time Facebook. As CEO Kent Lindstrom PlacePop the conference on Geo-Loco last month in San Francisco: “The first week has been initiated check-ins [Facebook is] more records than any other service provider entry in the history of geo have … Did two million users in Foursquare is undecided at this point. “

Well, it’s this week. Now I’m not saying that the Facebook pages et al Foursquare. Business overnight. I’m sure the engineers and product managers, companies are already struggling for ways to differentiate their services from Facebook, how to keep check-in runs on their networks.

Then push back the inevitable for some time, perhaps in part because that part of the Geolocation own Facebook that is in fact a Yelp Gowalla check-in or check-in Facebook. In fact, representatives Gowalla look uncomfortable, square, Booyah, Yelp and all she mechanically on stage last night in Gush as “very happy” that they were working with Facebook.

But the truth is that all these small services have been a wave of the novelty and excitement of early adoption. It can go a thrill, to move his team-mates as mayor of his local Starbucks in Foursquare, collecting stamps Pass Fantasy Gowalla or “buy” their favorite places in the Mytown Booyah. But what then? None of these applications relate very well to user goals and activities of the real world. You are not doing things that people do already slight.

Places appFacebook Facebook iPhone update function is another matter. After years of futile resistance, I was reluctant to convert Facebook. Why? Because the snowball effect of pure mass in your community has the best forum for social activities such as sharing photos, links and news.

Because Google is the best search engine on the Internet or send an e-mail or search for something on the card, and Twitter has the best distribution network of 140 signs jokes, Facebook, the best mechanisms for monitoring the quality of life friends. to win as opposed to the “Crunk” Foursquare card (the price for the entry in four different bars in one night), it has a high enough priority in the list of all but agoraphobic and misanthropic.

One of the most important things that people know want is to know where their friends are and where they were. And those are two of the main features of websites Facebook. If you go to the tab “Places Facebook iPhone application, or on the smart phone version of its website (touch.facebook.com) you see the page Plaza” in his current position, in my case, for example, San Francisco Xconomy.

If it is not a place that corresponds to your current location, you can create. Then you can check) announces the creation of a new article in RSS and friends top placement, and b), see who else has it recently.

The list of documents for entry is limited, so are the chances that people will see it listed at the search still in place and give you the ability. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the media event, he knew the property was ready for release sites when he found his girlfriend in a restaurant in Menlo Park, and used them to discover, the vice-president of the Facebook product, and his fiancee, Chris Cox also eat there.