Facebook has just invited us to an event on Wednesday afternoon at which the company “will provide an update on the service’s features and products.”
Sounds like a product launch, and Facebook is likely to unveil some features that will help it defend its turf from Google’s imminent social networking push.
At the top of the list of features Facebook watchers are anticipating: Places.
Facebook has long been working on some sort of location feature that will let users broadcast their whereabouts to friends. And anticipation has been building for weeks, as leaks trickled out that the Places debut was drawing near.
According to CNET, Places will “take the form of an application programming interface (API) for third-party companies on the Facebook developer platform, integrating existing “check-in” start-ups more deeply into the massive social-networking service and in turn permitting location-aware data to become a part of existing platform applications.”
This alone would put Facebook into direct competition with Foursquare and Gowalla, the two most popular check-in services.
But GigaOm thinks Facebook will go further. In a blog post earlier this year, Facebook said it was thinking more broadly about what other elements it could tie to a location feature. GigaOm writes that this “will almost certainly involve user-generated content such as photos and videos, as well as Yelp-style reviews, all tied to a location.”
That’s a much more potent offering than a stand-alone check-in service, and could put Facebook into direct competition with Yelp, ostensibly an ally. It would also help buffer itself from Google, which could easily tie in its own Places product to its new social networking push.
We’ll have to wait until Wednesday to know for sure, but watch the FT TechBlog’s own Facebook page on Wednesday afternoon, Pacific Time. If Places is unveiled, I’ll be checking-in from Facebook headquarters.
