Facebook Gives “Places” Check-In the Axe – Finally!

Sites include Facebook.com , Foursquare.com . Published on August 29th, 2011. Written by Anthony West.

Facebook doesn’t fail at much that it tries, but every now and again, even the most assured tech company can fall flat on its face.

The casualty of Facebook’s failure is the ‘Places’ check-in feature introduced over 12 months ago. The service simply didn’t take off as expected, and many people complained about the feature. And while it’s not clear whether the lack of traction was down exclusively to the presence of Foursquare, it appears Facebook didn’t manage to impress its users as a ‘provider’ of location based interaction.

Facebook is hardly going to give up its foray into location based social networking, and it’s expected that the tech giant will be coming with something to replace ‘Places’ pretty soon. There’s speculation that the replacement for the now defunct places will be based on ‘location tagging’, something Facebook should be pretty good at given its proficiency with photo tagging.

The folks at Facebook seem overjoyed rather than saddened by the death of places. A recent blog post by Chris Cox on Facebook’s blog suggested that the company is excited about giving users the ability to add location to anything. Mr Cox highlighted the fact that location tagging is set to become very big on Facebook.

‘Places’ looks set to rise like the Phoenix, but Facebook had  better do a better job of marketing the new incarnation of it. Perhaps marketing location based tagging as direct rival to Foursquare is not a bad idea.

Do you think Facebook was right in killing off ‘Places’ check-in? Share your thoughts in the comments below.