Facebook Punks Foursquare, Gets Them To Announce Nothing

I love how companies “cooperate” in the tech industry. Twitter recently “helped” out TweetMeme by giving them another business to focus on. Facebook has now “helped” out Foursquare by making them wonder what’s next. They also welcomed the company up on stage to announce that they would … GASP … consider what to do with Facebook Places! Wait, so their launch partner didn’t have early access to the Places API? Nope! Instead, Holger Luedorf of Foursquare was brought on stage to announce nothing, just stand there.

Way to become a launch partner! Contrast this with Booyah who’s already launching a new application, called InCrowd, on the back of Facebook’s Places API. So why didn’t Foursquare get early access to the API when Booyah did? I have no idea, but the only thing that I can conclude is that Facebook wanted to play politics while they watch Foursquare drown. They brought Foursquare on stage to give the perception that they were playing fair and attempting to support the company, but the only thing that was revealed was that the company had no detailed knowledge about Places.

I don’t want to preemptively say that Foursquare is about to killed by Facebook (we would never say Facebook would kill anything … except here, here, and of course here). However I’m not quite sure what value-add Foursquare brings to the table at this point. Badges? That already exists on Facebook. Perhaps check in tips? Maybe, except that’s pretty much accesible in the new Places product.

Foursquare happened to be the highest profile company to speak at the event because they were the most at risk of being damaged by Facebook Places. Dennis Crowley, CEO of Foursquare, is still optimistic however, despite appearing to be left in the dark on this one. He told VentureBeat, “If Facebook thinks that location is a good idea, then we are on to something.” Yes Dennis, you were definitely on to something, which is why Facebook just took your idea.

Granted, Foursquare users may not run for the door right away, but it’s only a matter of time. With 2 million users, there’s no way Foursquare users have the majority of their social graph using the product. Instead, a small group of people use the product and now Foursquare will need to figure out a major shift to their product (aka. “Pivot”). My only conclusion is this: Foursquare just got punked. Facebook learned their lesson from the Twitter experience: don’t let a potential competitor get too large. Acquire them or duplicate them early on.

Facebook offered Foursquare the opportunity to take the stage at their Places announcement (the announcement which could potentially kill Foursquare) and the company took the bait!! I can only hope that Foursquare can figure out a way to get back at Facebook because at this point they appear pretty exposed.

Source: All Facebook