Facebook and McDonald’s to launch geolocation ‘Check-Ins’
The buzz surrounding Foursquare at the moment may be muted once the big boys step into ring, as Facebook prepares to roll-out its own location-based social networking tools and Google’s Latitude continues to grow.
Facebook’s ‘Check-In’ app may arrive as early as this month with its launch partner McDonald’s.
McDonald’s has built an app that allows Facebook users to “Check-In” at one of its restaurants, posting their location within a potentially branded status update. With the McDonald’s app, users can also have a featured product appear in the post, such as an Angus Quarter Pounder.
According to AdAge, execs at other digital shops have begun to spec out location-based campaigns in anticipation of Facebook’s impending functionality as well, which will allow users to include their location in a status update.
Meanwhile, Google announced yesterday that its own location-based social network Latitude has over 3m active users, compared to Foursquare’s one million users.
Google’s Steve Lee said at the Web 2.0 Expo yesterday that Latitude has grown 30% per month each month this year so far. He also hinted that Latitude would soon have a check-in component like Facebook.
Latitude’s growth is driven largely by use on BlackBerry’s and its own Android mobile platform. Despite the fact that no one seems to talk about Latitude, over 10% of all Android users are using the service.
The little buzz surrounding Latitude may have to do with lack of iPhone support. However, Google’s Android platform continues to grow in popularity.
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Facebook going geo is the one we’ve all been waiting for. They’ve done what they usually do, sat back, watched, waited, worked out the best way to potentially monetise, and the rollout will likely be worth the wait. Might be too early to write off the Foursquares of the world, but this will be a game changer…
[...] this blog post some two months ago, and now it popped in my mind again when I heard the news of Facebook’s attempt to utilize geolocation. Better now than never, so here you go, from early [...]
[...] We reported earlier that Facebook has its own geolocation check-in app the way due later this month with launch partner McDonald’s. The burger chain has built an app that allows Facebook users to “Check-In” at one of its restaurants. [...]