I am nameless

Last week Facebook launched Places, their take on a location based check-in service. Although not yet working in the UK, I’ve seen the promotional video and I cant help but think that Foursquare and Gowalla, who were the forerunners in the location check-in services are doomed.

I have been using Foursquare for about a year, and although I probably don’t use it to its full potential, I have taken a real interest in the concept and how brands can maximise their social media and customer interaction through the service.

But with Facebook entering the market, the future for the likes of Foursquare looks bleak. I don’t think this is anything to do with the fact that Facebook will bring anything more technological to the party, nor will it be that brands will flock to use Places instead. Instead, I think that the shear weight and influence of Facebook will see millions adopting Places, making the service as irritating as the all to regular updates from abundance of clearly unemployed ‘friends’ I have on Facebook who seem to take great pleasure in letting me know that they have just received another fucking cow/barn/chicken/job seekers payment from Farmville.

I believe that users will become quickly disillusioned with Places, due to the all to regular updates and the appearance of at least one story in The Sun claiming the ‘Places got my house robbed’. This in turn will see users abandon Places before they have even had chance to see the service reach its full potential, and so forerunners such as Foursquare and Gowalla will only be used by a limited audience and have what could have been a massive audience achieved through organic growth turned off to their product by behemoth who has launched a product to a population of over 500 million in order to make quick buck.