It was the best of times for Facebook, it was the worst of times for local media, it was the age of Foursquare, it was the age of Places, it was the epoch of geo-location, it was the epoch of over-sharing.
In short, it was a week of hyperbole. For the last two days, everyone has tried to figure out just what Facebook Places means for location-based services, local media, Craigslist and our culture in general.
Prescott Shibles of eMedia Vitals takes an optimistic view. Assuming media organizations can take advantage of the API features built into Places, they have an opportunity to profit from the new mass audience for geo-location services:
“Media companies can begin integrating this API into their own mobile apps. Consumer publications can take advantage of restaurant dining, the bar scene, vacation spots, sporting events, music concerts, etc. Just about anything that could become a shared experience is a great idea for the Facebook Places API.”
On the other hand, Terry Heaton of Audience Research & Development sees Places as a direct threat to the ad revenues on which many organizations depend to support local journalism:
“By creating a brand new directory of local businesses, FB can monetize it a hundred different ways. Already projected to make $1.3 billion in advertising next year, I fully expect that number will be much bigger, as it begins to suck advertising dollars from the local marketplace. What will local media companies do to respond? Sell more banners on their brand extension websites?”
At the Guardian, Paul Smith agrees, but he sees Craigslist as the real target:
“When I look at Facebook Places, I see an impending marriage with Facebook Marketplace and a serious threat to Craigslist. Don’t think of Facebook Places as simply being about checking in; it’s about the broader ability to create geo-tagged content that can have relevance to tens of thousands of users in a given vicinity.”
After listening to Facebook’s vision for Places, CNET’s Caroline McCarthy thinks the company has taken a potentially more mass-market approach that values long-term sharing, not short-term location:
“Facebook Places’ debut marks a shift in the rhetoric of the location-based services market because of the company’s vocal connection of geolocation to permanence and memory, rather than the language of exciting immediacy (see what your friends are
doing right now! In real time!) touted by the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla. Whereas Foursquare handled check-ins as a digital embodiment of the frenetic pulse of the city around you — fittingly, it was developed in the madcap, bar-saturated grid of downtown New York, where there is
always somewhere more exciting you could be — Facebook looks at it as a three-dimensional chronicle.”