Facebook launched Places today. It is available on the new 3.2 update of Facebook for Iphone. While there were speculations revolving around about such application from Facebook for a long time, the day has finally arrived.
Places on Facebook for Iphone
I have been a great fan and a regular user of Foursquare for about a year. Mayor of 9 places and about 20 badges so far. And I loved it. I still do. But things will change from today. Though Facebook Places is still not available here in New York City, I am sure it will be in no time. And there is no doubt that I will be one of the first ones using it.
What this means is, applications like Foursquare (and Gowalla and so on..) are going to be kicked out of business in no time. This is the ugly truth of the way businesses work around here. When you have 500 million users constantly visiting your site, there is nothing much a great innovator can do. They just become the good guys who give you nice concepts for you to grow your own business. Even being one of the most extensive users of Foursquare, I will start using Facebook Places pretty soon. Why would I have to open another application to check in (which in fact, only does check-ins), when I can have ‘Facebook’ do it?
While Foursquare was doing great, with rewarding and revenue generating features like partnering with companies like Starbucks and Whole Foods; all that may not be enough ground for it to stay in business now.
UPDATE: While it seemed as if Facebook Places was getting unveiled along with Foursquare and others as partners, it appears that they were not even given early access to the API. So much for good intentions from Facebook!
Forget Foursquare, even Google has felt the quake http://bit.ly/daDNC1
I agree with your blog but we don’t use four square here and FB places is not applicable outside US yet. So I do not know how will we benefit here.
Thanks!
hey, can someone tell what does this means?
SAPANA RAMABADHT
thanks:)