Facebook missing the fun with check-in feature
When blogging became popular in the early 2000’s suddenly comments were being added into every application whether it made sense or not. Then along came social networking, and suddenly everyone crammed that ability into every site whether it made sense or not. Now there is Location-based-services, and not wanting to be left out, today Facebook decided to add Check-In as well.
I think Facebook is missing the point of WHY people check-in. Let’s face it, checking in everywhere you go is tedious and an invasion of privacy. But then why do so many people do it? Why is FourSquare so much more popular then GoWalla, BriteKite, etc…? The answer is game mechanics.
When people first sign up for FourSquare they are checking in left and right, and more importantly, being rewarded for it by getting badges. When does usage drop off for FourSquare? When most of the easy badges have been achieved.
So it’s great that you can now tell precisely where you are when updating your status on Facebook, but instead of this being the earth shattering result of “check-in for the masses” that was anticipated, I expect this will be as popular as Twitter’s location feature, which as far as I can tell has sparse usage.
People on Facebook love games, badges and levels. Just ask Zynga. If Facebook were to add game mechanics to this new check-in service, I think we could truly see the revolution Facebook’s developers were hoping for.
