Facebook Places: Facebook will now become the platform on which other check-in applications like Foursquare will be built. This puts Facebook in an even more powerful position than it is already in. If Facebook’s check-in functionality takes hold as the world’s default check-in engine, there’s a chance that much of the mobile application world will incorporate its API. And that can only be good for the company.
Google is nowhere in the social game–and its chances of getting somewhere diminish every day. Android won’t help Google here. Being the platform that runs the device on which the Facebook mobile app runs is not as powerful a position as providing the social graph that enables social apps to function–independent of the devices on which they are used. (Microsoft, meanwhile, is so absent here that it doesn’t even warrant a mention).
Foursquare, Gowalla, and other pioneers in the check-in business are now likely to become ancillary applications with more limited appeal. This doesn’t mean they’re toast (especially Foursquare)–just that they now have narrower opportunities. “Mayorships” and “badges” and other gaming elements of Foursquare’s app are likely to appeal to a smaller community than Facebook’s “what your friends did, said, and ate here.” As an analogy, everyone uses Facebook; fewer people play Farmville (but Zynga’s hardly a hurting company).
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