Could a deal with Localeze make Facebook Places a reality?
Check-in venture reportedly delayed due to privacy concerns
It's unlikely that the majority of MyTown, Foursquare, or Gowalla users have ever heard of Localeze, yet the business listings directory could be about to sign a deal with Facebook that pushes the social network firmly into the location-based arena.
Chatter suggests the social network has been making moves towards offering a location-based set-up – dubbed 'Places' – for some months, although the fallacy of such a drive was a lack of any kind of location data to back up the service.
In light of this, TechCrunch reports Facebook has approached Localeze – which aided Twitter in its recent location roll-out – to serve up such data, with the firm having generated a 14 million business strong database since it was formed nine years ago.
The check-in questionSpeculation suggests the software could initially be implemented to generate fan pages for businesses and commercial ventures, with actual check-ins – which would move Facebook firmly into location-based service territory – having been delayed due to the privacy concerns the network has had to deal with of late.
Nonetheless, it's no great stretch to imagine such a setup being implemented on Facebook's various mobile offerings – web and app based – in the near future.
Such a move would automatically supersede the current market leaders by some distance, with MyTown's 2.5 million strong userbase overshadowed somewhat by Facebook's 400 million plus user accounts.
The venture wouldn't be a departure for Localeze, either, with the firm having also signed agreements with the likes of Apple, Yahoo! and Bing in the past.
TechCrunch