What Will Facebook Be Announcing Wednesday? Location, Location, Location!
Foursquare might want to stock up on the Mylanta on Wednesday. — That's because a multitude of sources indicate that Facebook will finally be rolling out its own geo-location offering and the date now looks set for the day after tomorrow.
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook's location feature has been a slow-burn rumor all summer: back in May, reports surfaced that a check-in offering was weeks away, though outlets disagreed over whether the real target was Foursquare or Twitter — see the earlier Facebook location report and Silicon Alley Insider's contrarian take that everybody was reading it wrong. By August 10, sources had converged on an imminent launch aimed squarely at Foursquare's territory.
What changed today is specificity: BoomTown pins the debut to this Wednesday, and TechCrunch's syndicated take reframes the story — arguing that a Facebook clone is itself confirmation Foursquare has 'entered the pantheon' of services worth copying. The rumored shape matters as much as the date: sources say Facebook's check-in will ship as an API third-party companies can build on, not just a consumer feature.
First-order effects
- Foursquare goes from category leader to incumbent-under-attack overnight: if Facebook ships check-ins to its user base on Wednesday, Foursquare's core mechanic becomes a free feature inside a far larger network.
- Third-party developers get a fork in the road — the rumored check-in API means they could layer location features onto Facebook rather than integrating Foursquare directly.
Second-order effects
- Foursquare's response options narrow: it can either differentiate beyond check-ins or position itself as a partner layer atop Facebook's API, and either path reshapes its partnerships with venues and brands.
- Twitter, named alongside Foursquare in the May reporting as a possible target, faces pressure to answer on location too, turning check-ins into a three-way platform race.
Third-order effects
- The pattern here is platforms absorbing standalone products as features: if the API version ships, location data flows toward whoever owns the social graph, and single-purpose check-in startups are pushed up the stack toward deals, loyalty, and analytics.
- For local merchants and advertisers, a Facebook-scale check-in product consolidates where location-based marketing budgets land — one API integration potentially replacing several startup partnerships.
The trend: Social platforms are folding standalone mobile services into their own feature sets via APIs, with Foursquare's check-in mechanic the current test case for whether scale beats first-mover focus.