Facebook to Announce Its Own Foursquare Knockoff

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There's no confirmation on this, of course. But multiple news outlets are quoting multiple sources all tipping off the same thing: Facebook will be making a big announcement on Wednesday and its a location based service for its platform.

At first blush, this would seem to be bad news for Foursquare; the little startup that has actually put location based service technology on the map (couldn't resist that one).

Indeed, it probably is.

Then again, reread my post from last month on location based services, "Throwing Cold Water on Foursquare". To refresh your memory, Forrester Research published a survey this summer indicating only 4% of U.S. adults online have ever used a LBS at all. 84% don't even know what it is.

It's to Foursquare's credit that it has been able to generate this much buzz with so little there there (with a nod to Gertrude Stein).

While Foursquare doesn't need the likes of a Goliath like Facebook to become its competitor overnight, it does need LBS to become more ubiquitous. Facebook entering the fray is just the catalyst to do it.

My other thought on this: get ready for another round of Facebook stepping in deep doo doo with its subscribers.

Let's do the math:

Facebook + LBS = Personal privacy gets thrown under the bus again

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Renee Oricchio

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987.

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