by Thu Nguyen

Created on: September 28, 2010

Anyone with an iPhone and is on Facebook knows that with the new location-based feature called Places, finding out where your friends are, what they're doing and even 'checking in' on where they've been at will be fun. Despite the privacy concerns which exposes more visibility to our friends and family such as being checked in without our consent, with a little tweaking of the settings, those worries will be at ease.

Furthermore, if you've already experienced Foursquare, the location-based virtual explorer which endows users with points and cool badges has now merged together with the big mogul of social networking online to give more play to mobile networking. While many will argue that one is better than the other, the truth is business is picking up for both. Moreover, the subtle differences between these two services must be defined clearly to see how they compliment each other well. So let's look at them both in comparison to one another.

Checking In Rewards

Foursquare, the small mobile startup has grown to more than 500,000 users. Yet they are only less than a year old. That's quite a small number compared to 500 million Facebook users online. However, it was Foursquare who popularized the process of 'checking in' to places and allowing your friends to do so too ... with benefits.

With Foursquare, the incentive to check-in gives users points, badges, to-dos and even accumulate coupons doing what they do in real life. It's more of a game to see 'where you at?' Furthermore, you need an iPhone or smartphone with the GPS feature to take advantage of this free service. Not any mobile phone can do the trick.

On the other hand, Facebook Places don't have the points and badges system. However, you can tag friends and claim your places via uploading a business license. You can also earn travel rewards every time you check-in to hospitality venues. This makes it more legitimate for businesses.

Foursquare, though, will instill a fun element by allowing you to become mayor of a certain place after a certain amount of check-ins. So you can see the subtle differences here where the catering of the audience will sway.

Not Yet Monetizing

Foursquare was recently promoted at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival earlier this year. They’re hoping to get the same buzz that Twitter got in 2007. Not only that, Starbucks is testing out the program by giving customer-loyalty points for each ‘check-in’. This can create a surge of other interested businesses to utilize location-based networks. However, there are no real monetization plans as of yet.

The same is for Facebook Places as business can claim their places but news on advertising or sales are yet to be planned. With the recent integration of Foursquare into Facebook Places, bringing over the points and badges is now possible. Since, both services are fairly new and mainly for the US, the support of other ‘check-in’ services like Gowalla, Yelp and Booyah are also integrated to boost the trend of mobile networking.

Overall, one would like to think that Facebook Places is giving an opportunity to small networks like Foursquare rather than take away it’s purpose. By enabling a larger audience to ‘check-in’ on their phones, users can now find spots that were non-existent to them before. This in terms boost businesses and even the social stratosphere through the ideal use of location-based networking.

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