Foursquare's newest competitor is ... Facebook?

Filed under: Web services, Social Software

It's really not Foursquare's week. Just after they'd launched Foursquare Everywhere, an awesome update that took Foursquare checkins worldwide, we saw a flurry of announcements from competitors both old and new. Yelp is in the game now, and Foursquare's main nemesis, Gowalla, just rolled out some snazzy new features.

If you thought this pool couldn't get any more crowded, think again, because Facebook is reportedly about to do a massive cannonball into the deep end of this whole social check-in thing. Will Facebook check-ins turn into a Foursquare killer?

They definitely could. For one thing, it's likely that your friends are already on Facebook. If you're one of the millions of users who updates Facebook daily, it's not much of a stretch to check in while you're there, and completely avoid opening a separate app like Foursquare or Gowalla. Check-ins wouldn't be Facebook's main business, by any means, but they would certainly help bump up the site's engagement numbers, and help its ad revenues.

The thing is, Foursquare might always be one jump ahead of Facebook, unless someone else buys it out. When we talk about these services, we're still saying "Foursquare-like location-based app," and that's because Foursquare - much like Twitter - was the first company to find a decent mix of simplicity and features. Plenty of people would still use it, even if Facebook launched a competitor. Personally, I'd love to see an app that lets you check in on all of these services at once.

[via Silicon Alley Insider]

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Foursquare's newest competitor is ... Facebook? originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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