Facebook Places – New Feature of Facebook Launched

In an attempt to rival the rapidly growing FourSquare, Facebook has launched a new feature called “places” that allows you to check in via your Facebook iphone app or through touch.facebook.com on your browser and share where you are with your Facebook friends. As of now, there are too many limitations for it to rival FourSquare, but Facebook will undoubtedly continue to update Places making it likely to surpass FourSquare in its popularity given Facebook’s 500,000,000+ total users. Below are some key points about the new feature (both good and bad).

• The mobile app is only good for iPhones. Everyone else must check in on a browser. This is a huge turnoff for blackberry and droid users.
• Not all locations are supported through Facebook Places. Where I’m sitting, right now, I am unable to check in on Facebook, but can on FourSquare.
• I can easily tag friends from Facebook when I check in.
• Instead of texting or calling, I can help a Facebook friend easily find my location through Places.  Considering most of my friends are also my Facebook friends, this is a plus.
• Facebook Places has the same limitation with FourSquare where I don’t have to be in the place in order to check in.
• Like FourSquare, you can see other Facebook users who checked into the location you are in. If you think this feature is “creepy” on FourSquare, you will feel the same about Facebook Places.
• There are no “mayor” incentives like there are with FourSquare. This is a huge advantage that FourSquare has over Facebook Places as of right now. I like FourSquare because I know that if I become the mayor (the person with the most check ins at one location) I have the ability to receive discounts from that location. Facebook is not doing anything like this yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see businesses rewarding users who check into their location.

Right now I’ll likely use both just to see how Facebook Places progresses. I have a feeling this addition to Facebook will only help FourSquare’s growth as Facebook users starts to discover its existence and the “better” features that accompany the program.   This won’t stop Facebook Places from surpassing FourSquare’s total users given the already 500 million + users Facebook already has.