Alex Stone • Maniacal Rage: The Problem with Facebook's "Places"

Maniacal Rage: The Problem with Facebook's "Places"

Here’s the thing about Facebook that really gets under my skin: They are slowly incorporating the features from every other independent web application on the internet. This is not inherently a problem—companies get bigger and they begin to have the resources to widen their feature set—the issue…

I wholeheartedly agree. Facebook Places is incredibly boring. It literally does nothing but check you in to places and let your friends know where you are. You should be pissed off that boring things like this get super popular because of their installed user based. But in Facebook’s defense, the Facebook Places has a lot of potential due to the sizable user base and the stuff we’re already sharing on/with Facebook.

While I find Facebook Places boring, I’m not ready to write it off, yet. Places (as I will refer to it from now on, with the capital ‘P’), I wouldn’t call it an offensive gesture to check in services. In fact, I think Places will bring a lot of users who’ve ignored Gowalla and Foursquare into the checkin app fold. As a fan of checking in to places, this can only be a good thing.

I’m also certain that Facebook is taking an Apple-esque approach with Places, starting with the bare minimum and expanding outward based on what how people seem to be using it. Sure, Places 1.0 may be boring, but once we can start Place-tagging our photos, notes, statuses, and even friend connections, this might get more interesting.

I mean, how cool would it be to accept a friend request and tag it as a friend you met at a conference or at a coffee shop?

I don’t see Facebook ever getting into rewarding users with real-world prizes and collectible virtual items like Gowalla or, to a lesser extent, offering frequent patron titles like Foursquare, but that’s not really the point. Facebook doesn’t need to make a game out of checking in. They’ve already got the users and games isn’t really Facebook’s things.

Source: maniacalrage