Who, What, When, and Now...Where
If you're like me, when you find a place you really like, you want to tell your friends you're there. Maybe it's a new restaurant, a beautiful hiking trail or an amazing live show. — Starting today, you can immediately tell people about that favorite spot with Facebook Places.
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook's move follows a March report that it would add location sharing and May sightings of check-in functionality and a Places tab. Making the feature available turns a long-signaled social capability into a product that can attach physical venues to Facebook activity.
Coverage of the same launch also points to integrations with Gowalla, Foursquare and Bing Maps, plus an advertiser role in building the place directory—making Places more than a status-update feature.
First-order effects
- Facebook users can associate updates with venues and share where they are with friends, giving Facebook a new location-based layer in its social graph.
- Gowalla, Foursquare and Bing Maps gain a distribution connection to Facebook Places, while advertisers are drawn into populating its venue directory.
Second-order effects
- Foursquare and Gowalla must balance the reach from Facebook integration against the risk that Facebook becomes the primary interface through which users check in.
- Advertisers and venue operators gain an incentive to maintain accurate place information where social activity can direct friends toward a location.
Third-order effects
- If check-ins become routine, Facebook can make the social graph a discovery and directory layer for physical businesses, rather than limiting it to people and posts.
- The launch tests whether location services consolidate around a large social network that combines friend activity, mapping partners and merchant participation.
The trend: Location sharing is moving from a standalone check-in behavior into a social-network feature tied to venue directories and business participation.