Facebook Places Will Dominate the Location-based Space - Uwe Hook - MediaBizBloggers

Facebook launched its location-based check-in service, Facebook Places, last week. As with all those services (Foursquare, Loopt, Gowalla, Yelp), Facebook Places allows users to share their location and discover new hot spots by following the stops of people in their network.

As we come to expect from Facebook, the service launched with privacy implications: Once again, we had to double-check our privacy settings to avoid visible, non-authorized check-ins by friends. This is annoying and can lead to very uncomfortable situations within your Social Graph. (You say to friend A, you're working late while your friend B is busy checking you into a dive bar.) And it may lead to dilution of data value since a healthy chunk of users will abuse the tool to avoid the 'Big Brother' implications any location-based services have. (Checking-in at work while you're actually enjoying your second beer at the aforementioned dive bar.)

One of the reasons why Foursquare and all the other services developed a loyal following was the option to develop a new Social Graph within the Foursquare universe. You could choose to share it with your Facebook/Twitter friends or you could keep it to your Foursquare graph. Another important reason for the advent of Foursquare/Gowalla was the entertainment factor: Collecting badges, mayorships, specials.

And, now we have Facebook Places.

Over the weekend, I saw a fairly high adoption rate in my Social Graph. And a pretty big decline in updates on Sunday/Monday. This was to be expected. Let's face it: Facebook Places is plain boring. I can check-in, create a place. And then check-in and create another place. End of story. Nothing entertaining about it. Nothing intriguing. It almost feels like punching the clock, sharing with your friends the banality of your life. And the places you go to.

It doesn't matter.

No doubt about it: Foursquare/Gowalla/Loopt/Yelp are much more engaging and entertaining location-based services. They offer value (coupons), recognition (badges) and entertainment (check into your favorite TV show, as an example).

But they don't have 500 million users. Facebook does. Add to that the more than 1 million pages developed by local businesses and I can't find any reason why Facebook won't dominate this space.

3^rd party services will monetize Facebook Places. Not Facebook.

I wouldn't count on Facebook monetizing Places. Just the procedure how to claim your own place makes you cringe. (Businesses are asked to send in articles of certificate of incorporation, local business license, etc.) Their track record is very bad and they tend to leave it to developers to come up with concepts how to monetize the platform. Zynga, anyone? Start-ups will take learnings from Foursquare and Loopt, develop valuable ways to share location with your graph (or the world) and monetize it in new ways. At best, Foursquare and its competitors will remain niche players. At worst, they might disappear in the myth cloud of first movers. It's hard to argue with 500 million users.

Uwe Hook is the CEO and Co-Founder of BatesHook, Inc. (www.bateshook.com) and a veteran of the advertising and marketing industry with the goal of building connections between people and brands. Uwe can be reached at uwe@bateshook.com.

Read all Uwe's MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Subversions - MediaBizBloggers.

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