soupsoup: Facebook Places is basically a...

Facebook Places is basically a Foursquare clone, as expected.

One really nice feature is your friends have to opt-out of you checking them in, awesome, and so Facebook. That’s right, your friends can check you in, even if you didn’t check in yourself. It’s almost as if Facebook wants you to hate them.

People can create a “Place” for your house. At first it’s private, but if enough people check in, it becomes public.

Because of Facebook’s size, it takes all privacy issues location apps have wrestled with for over 10 years (Dodgeball) and cranks them up to 11.

Think you hated seeing all those Foursquare check-ins in your stream, well get ready to see 500 million users checking into your stream on Twitter and Facebook.

Location based apps are great, if they stay in their silos. Facebook and Twitter streams shouldn’t have check in’s polluting the stream. Currently the only twitter app I know that lets you filter out location check ins is Tweet Deck.

Here’s an excellent, concise look into the just-announced Facebook Places, which is basically garbage, but is mainly a Foursquare clone. Why would anybody want to check into their own house? Why would anybody want to see a long series of Facebook updates that read “Johnathan Doeford just checked in at Jamba Juice and you totally care!”?

Now, people who know me know that I’m a Foursquare user and are currently sharpening their pitchforks and flags that say “hypocrite!” on them. Well, relax, because murder and public ridicule won’t solve anything, but really relax because I use Foursquare in its own isolated way. I like to read tips, get badges, and piss someone off when I take their mayorship. 99% of the time, unless I actually have a thought to share, I never tweet or Facebook update with my Foursquare check-ins, because you don’t care, trust me.

Therefore, Facebook Places, I already think, is a fail.

Source soupsoup

Reblogged from soupsoup