Did Facebook Learn from Google's Failed Social Media Attempts?
Facebook announced their entrance into the location-based services game today and my hunch tells me they learned from the mistakes of Google.
Let me explain.
You see, Facebook's "Places" borrows from services like Foursquare and Gowalla, which allow users to check in at places and broadcast their location to friends.
Users will be able to check in, alerting their friends on Facebook of their presence. They will then be able to see any friends that are nearby as well as other people who have checked in at the same location and have agreed to have their location broadcast widely.
It's very smart of Facebook to leverage the backbones of the other location-based services. There has been wide speculation that Facebook would have their own offering, but nope.
This move begs to ask the question: did Facebook learn from the mistakes of Google, i.e. Google Buzz and Google Wave?
My guess is that they did and here's why: there's no need to build a service that already exists and is very popular already. Social media fanatics don't want duplicates, they want innovation. Or, as in Facebook Places case, add-on features enhance a service with the help of others.
It's a simple premise, but could be a game changer for location-based social media — not to mention the gold mind that marketers will be sitting on once this service starts rolling.
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