Jolie O'Dell from Mashable did a great interview with Foursquare Vice President of Mobile and Partnerships, Holger Luedorf, about Facebook Places. I've embedded the video at the end of this post. I posted a comment and wanted to expand a bit here, since everyone in San Francisco with a blog is required to post an opinion on this topic.

Yesterday's announcement from Facebook included a section that welcome some of their API partners on stage. Two were Gowalla and Foursquare. These startups are known for the check in experience, which is exactly what Facebook Places launched yesterday. The difference is that Facebook's users base is 500 million+ where the other two are still growing, but tiny in comparison.

Each startup seemed to be excited about Facebook entering the space, and talked about their points of differentiation (Gowalla talked about their beautiful hand-drawn stamps and Foursquare talked about their gaming, badges, and venue deals). In the end though, my opinion is that people don't use these services for these ancillary benefits. They use it to check into venues and see where there friends are.

The problem: Facebook's product is exactly that.

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I had a discussion about location based, check-in oriented services this morning over breakfast. It reminded me of a missing feature, which if added could make these services much more valuable for everyone involved: automated check-outs.

I've heard arguments for automated check-in, but I've never agreed. I don't think I'd feel comfortable not having control on when I'm getting checked-in. Plus, the list of near venues rarely contains the one I'm actually at, so I'd assume auto check-ins would have an accuracy problem.

That said, it baffles me why no one has introduced auto check-out.

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