After Twitter, it’s now turn for the biggest Social Networking Site – Facebook to incorporate the Geolocation application into its kitty. And, this is an addition to an already enormous applications package that Facebook comprises. Recently announced news of improvisations to the Like button, addition of a new feature to its website, etc. were not enough for the Social Networking behemoth to be self-content. Thereby it has taken another step towards giving us users a chance to relish the feature of a Geolocation “check-in” service in the form of an application programming interface.
It becomes inevitable to know what this feature could do for us. Geolocation enables the wireless detection of the physical existence of a web user. It could give information that is general like the continent in which the user is communicating from or even provide as specific an information as the user’s actual location defined by longitude, latitude and sometimes even with altitude. To be more technically meticulous in this, the geolocation information is ascertained through many ways including data about the user’s IP address, MAC Address, RFID, Wi-Fi or GPS connections. However, the nature of the Geolocation API that Facebook plans to launch is unknown yet.
As mentioned earlier, Facebook is said to mould an API (application programming interface) for third-party firms and assimilate the few ‘check-in’ start-ups into the huge social networking service arena. Its recent acquisition of a second tier called Hot Potato served the purpose of letting members check into events. Similar tie-ups with better check-in agents would enable users to check into locations along with events. Having ruled the current market in the geolocation space Foursquare and Gowalla would evidently expect some competition from Facebook. However, it would take quite some time for Facebook to master the Geolocation market (like Foursquare has) and take the lead. How Facebook would do so remains a secret as not many detailed reports on the same are out yet. Rumours also claim that Facebook had previously planned to acquire the New-York based Foursquare. The idea now is to integrate the services of third-party firms and offer developers with geo-location capabilities on Facebook platform.
Facebook has been quite candid in showing off its each and every feature or application even before launching them on the social networking site. So, it is hard to comprehend as to what has kept them so mum on the Geolocation application launch, especially after announcing publicly about their Geolocation projects about 4 months ago. With the anticipation of Facebook unveiling the Geolocation application today, all our questions could well be answered.
