The Geo-location Wars

When Facebook Places arrived on the scene, some said it held trouble for Foursquare, Gowalla, SCVNGR, and other geo-location services. Based on the sheer number of potential users (the percentage of the 500 million Facebook users that have a Places-enabled smartphone), it had the potential to be big, but, as we at S2EO argued, Places was missing the competitive and/or gaming aspects of other services that keep people coming back.

SCVNGR is set to hit 500,000 users today. What the service lacks in technical GPS technology, it's making up for with big business partnerships for rewards, fun challenges, and (from what we hear anecdotally) a stellar customer service team that tries to work closely with brands.

Foursquare, meanwhile, is set to surpass the 4 million member mark later this week, with an estimated 20,000 people signing up each day.

And Facebook? There's no official data there on user numbers. People throw out the 500 million member user base, but that doesn't really mean much. It only applies to those 500 million who are in the United States, which shrinks the number to about 150 million. Then consider the number of people in the US with smartphones, which shrinks that number to about 45 million. That's closer to the real pool of potential users, but even that isn't totally accurate, considering if you don't have an iPhone or your smartphone isn't equipped with HTML5, you still can't use Places.

Facebook Places then has a potential user base of about 45 million, which is still huge compared to its geo-location rivals. Yet, it's still not translating into real usage. In a completely unscientific review of Facebook updates, it took over 200 entries before finding one that involved places (or 0.4%) - yet, interestingly this wasn't due to a dearth of smartphone usage: 18% of those 200 updates were made from various smartphones. 


So where's the breakdown happening? At S2EO, we still feel it's due to the lack of a gaming aspect that other brands have. Some businesses are starting to integrate rewards with checking into Facebook Places, but not nearly at the level of Foursquare or even SCVNGR. Foursquare also offers mayorships and badges. Gowalla offers "Founder"-ships and bonus items. SCVNGR offers challenge to complete for points. And, interestingly, most of these geo-location services have actually seen an up-tick in users and check-ins after the Places launch.

The geo-location wars certainly aren't over, but Places isn't going to be able to put up much of a fight if it doesn't offer something different soon. Where do you see its future going?