Facebook Takes On FourSquare

An anonymous reader writes "Facebook Places is similar to FourSquare. You can go to places, 'check-in' so your friends know you're there, rate them, comment on them, and generally spew your opinions all over the internet as fast as your fingers can hit the keys. It's an obvious attempt by the company to muscle in on FourSquare's block, casting its influence ever further over us all." Now the question is, who at FourSquare turned down the offer, and how badly are they crapping their pants?

Comments

Re:All of us?

[kalirion]

I never used Foursquare, because it reminds of the game the retarded kids have to play at recess.

Yes, because any activity involving even the slightest bit of exercise is only for the "retarded".

Re:Foursquare? Never heard of it.

[garcia]

I use Facebook all the time. I've never heard of Foursquare. Is this another one of those "I use it, therefore I assume everybody uses it" kind of things?

No, it's been all over CNN and the rest of the major news outlets. They have big deals with tons of different big name museums, etc. It's "another one of those 'If you read the news you should know what it is' kind of things". But hey I totally agree with you. While I know what it is, I choose not to use it even though I was a pretty heavy Dodgeball user (its predecessor which was bought out by Google and then killed) back in the day.

This is why I hate Four Square

[rshxd]

I hate it when people double bounce the ball while playing four square

Foursquare and offers

[Sockatume]

The guy who founded Foursquare's predecessor, Dodgeball, actually sold the business to Google, where it became Latitude. He was dissatisfied at that product's narrow scope, and set up Foursquare to revisit that niche the way he preferred. I imagine that Facebook put in a bid for Dodgeball and began work on Facebook Places after they were rejected.

Re:Foursquare and offers

[Sockatume]

Actually now that I do some background reading, the Google sale took place back in 2005, so it's much too old for Facebook to have had a look in.

Re:Foursquare? Never heard of it.

[SydShamino]

Foursquare, and its sister location-based social networking application Gowalla, were the darlings of this year's SXSW Interactive conference - the same conference where Twitter launched. I take it your not a web applications developer*, because if you were you would have followed SXSW and then you would have heard of Foursquare.

* Unlike most of Slashdot, which seem to be except when posting in this story. =p