Yesterday Business Insider covered new Facebook privacy features that were rolled out. One of the changes is that Facebook’s check-in service, Places, would be phased out with similar functionality being available on the new version of the mobile app. While we think it’s too early to pick a “winner”, there are indicators that state it’s not really going away.
The first hint is that Facebook said “it will be integrated” in with status updates, meaning you will most likely be able to tag businesses that have Pages on Facebook. And given that 2/3 of small businesses have Pages, in addition to chains setting up local Pages, this seems like a no-brainer in the evolution of the site.
Some people have speculated that Facebook dropped the feature because “People aren’t using it”, however given the massive growth reported last year it seems unlikely that the drop off was the significant Also, this would be counter to their local strategy with the recent emphasis placed on Deals in addition to the preference for small businesses to use Facebook Ads over Google ads.
Are Facebook Places over? Maybe in name, but the functionality will only become more seamless for the end user.