Facebook is the dominant “mobile social network.” We know this from Opera, Nielsen, our surveys and other third party data. We know for example that more than 70 million Facebook regularly access the site on a mobile device. No other network appears close (notwithstanding GroundTruth’s
assertion that MySpace is the largest mobile social network).
Silicon Alley Insider
now reports that “Facebook Is Working On A Foursquare-Killer.” As a digression it’s lamentable that “Fill-in-the-blank Killer” has to appear in every third technology headline. Having said that, here’s the relevant part of the discussion:
A source briefed on the matter tells us Facebook is working on a feature that will allow users who access the network from mobile devices to “check-in” and broadcast their current location to all their friends.
If Facebook does add check-ins for mobile devices does it “kill” FourSquare? My answer would be “no.” Facebook has a massive mobile user base, true, but FourSquare has a loyal following. Just as various Google products were launched in many instances with the moniker “X-Killer,” only in a few cases has this actually turned out to be true. Navigation is one of them.
However, Google Checkout didn’t kill PayPal. Google Base (now closed) didn’t kill Craigslist. Knol didn’t kill Wikipedia. Lively didn’t kill Second Life (yes, it’s still around). Okut didn’t kill . . . well, it hasn’t done very well outside a few isolated markets. And Facebook hasn’t killed Twitter, despite becoming much more Twitter-like over the past six months.
I had predicted that Facebook would buy FourSquare, but instead the social media site appears to be trying to adopt some of its functionality. FourSquare founder Dennis Crowley is a smart guy and understands that he has to keep ahead of his competitors with new content and features.
Quoting Crowley on his reaction to the report, SAI reports:
For his part, Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley told us he fully expects Facebook and others to launch “check-in” functionality, making it “commodity by the end of the year.”
Dennis says Foursquare’s survival depends on providing “the most incentive for a user to check-in.” Right now, Foursquare awards frequent users badges and calls the users who check-in at certain venues the most “mayor.”
“I think we’re doing this better than anyone else and I think we’ll continue to do so. We have so much stuff on the whiteboard that we haven’t even touched yet… we’re really just getting started.”
FourSquare’s movement further into the mainstream is what could be affected by Facebook, if the latter copies FourSquare’s features. However simply adding mobile check-ins alone won’t truly impact FourSquare. As I’ve said, check-ins predate FourSquare and it’s not all that FourSquare offers to its users.