Foursquare execs seemed positive at last night's event, but Facebook's entry into location-based services will leave little room for competition.
Facebook's entrance to into location-based services "validates the market." I didn't say that. Instead it was, of all people, Holger Luedorf, the vice president of mobile products for Foursquare. Yup, the location-based service that's likely becoming the Mayor of Irrelevant-ville stepped up last night and gave a not-so-hearty endorsement of Facebook's new Places feature.
Virtually everyone watching the press conference in person and online seemed to share the same sentiment—the introduction of location-based services into the world's biggest social network would pretty much mark the end of all competing apps. So why is Foursquare endorsing it?
They aren't.
Way back in the 1990s, when Microsoft began introducing built-in Windows features that had previously been stand-alone competitive products (disk compression and memory management are two examples), the competition said the exact same thing to me: "Microsoft's entry validates the category." This is supposed to mean that a nascent product category like today's location-based check-in-and check-out services now transitions into a full-blown market. What it really means, though, is "oh, crap, the 800 pound gorilla just entered the room. Smile at it and play nice and maybe it will let me co-exist for a time before sitting on me."
During Luedorf's brief time on stage, he looked down-right depressed and spoke wistfully of how the company pioneered the category. He really couldn't whip up real enthusiasm for Facebook's Places, but at least Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg allowed him to be on stage. Other near competitors who essentially bowed and scrapped before the mighty Facebook included Yelp and Gowalla. At least Yelp, which offers user reviews and recommendations for restaurants, services, and entertainment, can be seen as complimentary to Places.
Don't get me wrong, Facebook had to do this. I've said this before and I'll say it again, there is no more important technology frontier in the social and mobile space than location. It's actually a wonder that it took Facebook this long.
Oddly, while Foursquare, Yelp, and Gowalla weren't crying on stage, Facebook's own VP of Products, Chris Cox almost did as he spoke wistfully of the power of Places and how to this would unlock bookshelves full of dusty memories.
Cox's speech was a bit over the top, but I do see the combination of all that shared memory stored on Facebook and Places location-based tools as a powerful and important combination. We all have incredibly faulty memories, and if you ask someone where they were when they were doing something, I bet they couldn't tell you. They also would have trouble remembering who else was there. I've been in these conversations:
"Yeah, it was me, Bill, Marty…oh, wait. Was Marty there? Or was that the week before when we all went out for ribs? Who? Oh, Mary was there? I don't remember that. Oh, right, that was a different place."
I'm always shocked when people on the witness stand recall with crystal clarity what happened on a night two years ago. You know some of that is made up. Facebook Places would certainly take the guesswork out of such things. You check in when you arrive, and even if your friend forgot their phone, if they're on Facebook, you can check them in as well. Then when tales and photos of the wild night are added later, you can actually verify who was there, who wasn't, and where they heck all of you were.
Obviously, the other big question everyone was asking is, how can you prevent people from checking you in when you, well, don't want to be checked in? You can always opt out of the service and the default is not to let friends check you in. What's unclear right now, though, is, once you allow people to check you in, is that for everything? Clearly there are times when people want others to know where they are and times when they don't.
Early in Foursquare's life, people checking into places other than their homes were viewed as open invitations to burglarize the now theoretically empty home. When people go on vacation, they sometimes don't tell people, so no one knows the house is unattended. However, I can, with Facebook Places, imagine a scenario where you go visit a relative who is also a Facebook friend. You didn't check into a restaurant near your relative's home, but they helpfully did because they consider this a mini-family reunion that they want to capture for posterity. Unfortunately, this also means people now know you aren't at your home.
Obviously, it's still the early hours of this service—way too early to pass judgment. While the Facebook iPhone app update rolled out overnight, support for the location service isn't everywhere. I couldn't access it. So we'll wait.
My guess is there will be a fair share of people calling Places a gross invasion of privacy. Others will fall in love with it and, like every other Facebook feature, use it to death. One thing you can count on, however, is that the only validation Facebook Places has given to Foursquare is the kind you use for parking. Facebook just validated your parking, Foursquare, feel free to leave the market.