Facebook announced its newest service this past Wednesday, and I’ve started a pool to see how long it will be before it’s implicated in a murder spree. It’s called “Places”, and it’s not at all an attempt to cash in on the popularity of Foursquare.
Places lets you visit a … let’s call it a place – the all-night pachinko den, local happy endings massage parlor, Billy’s Moist Pillow Gazebo, what have you — and tell the whole Facebook-using world about it. ‘Cause what better way to destroy the ambiance of that little mom ‘n’ pop joint that only you know about? Broadcasting your location is the best method I know to say “NOTICE ME, ARBITRARY AND UNCARING UNIVERSE! I’M SIGNIFICANT!”
But it gets better. If you choose to hit up the local coffee shop and “check in”, your name will be added to the “People Here Now” section of the app. Hey, remember that girl you slept with last week, and how you said you’d call her, and you never did? Check it out: she’s in the coffee shop with you right now. Don’t look around! Maybe she hasn’t checked her iPhone yet! Where’s the bathroom? Can you crawl out the window? Dammit, when will this venti chai latte get here, already?
And in case none of this sounds out of control enough, it turns out that your friends can check you in themselves, which I’m thinking will lead to a lot of utterances of “Oops, sorry dude”. Especially when you reveal that you blew off one group of friends to hang out with another, which you know you do, you bad person, what kind of friend are you?
Now, it’s rumored that Places will be integrating with Foursquare somehow, sometime, but I hope that’s unfounded. I want a good old-fashioned grudge match, like the kind Apple and Microsoft used to have back in The Day. Ol’ Bill’s kinda checked out these days, and Steve-O is too busy being egotistical and arrogant to care for that sort of thing anymore, so it’s up to technology’s young Turks to pick up where they left off. I wanna see Mark Zuckerberg and Dennis Crowley face(book)-off/(four)square off with their forearms tied together “Beat It” style, while Eddie Van Halen’s dessicated carcass wails on his axe in the background. And then it wouldn’t matter who’s checking in whom, because we’d all be there, placing bets on the winner for the hearts and minds of the free world!
Inception. In theaters near you.
