There have always been rumours about Mark Zuckerburg , if the strapline of the new facebook film is anything to go by anyway: ’You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies’.
If you’re not familiar the story goes that the world’s most successful social network may not have been entirely his idea, but then are any ideas ever totally original?
The inspiration for these philosophical ramblings is the launch of Facebook Places, essentially an introduction of the services already offered by the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla into Facebook’s smartphone app.
In brief users log their locations or ‘check in’ from a list of places generated by the app in response to GPS technology. In the existing apps users can earn points, rewards and badges.
Clearly in a commercial sense brands investing in rewards and prizes makes more sense on Facebook because of its superior user numbers, but as with the rest of the online world you have to decide who you’re after. Because of their release policies and early adopters Gowalla and Foursquare have difference audiences and it remains to be seen which sectors of the Facebook community take up the offer of Facebook Places.
In a true lesson from Zuckerburg himself we’ll be keeping a close eye on how things pan out in America in the run up to the UK release, and learning from the experiences of others.
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