gowalla

The 404 648: Where we know exactly where you are (podcast)

Jill Schlesinger, aka Aunt Jill of CBS MoneyMoney, fills in for Justin, who is waiting for the cable guy. I believe they told him they'd come sometime between today and next week between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. (We all know how the cable guy loves to be on time).

On today's show, we talk about Facebook Places, a location-based check-in service. Say you're at a fantastic restaurant. You'll be able to check in with your mobile phone with GPS, leave comments about the food and service, tag your friends who … Read more

Facebook goes Places

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded: Update your Facebook Places Verizon on the iPad Google Chrome Web Store leaks Intel to buy McAffe Personal spy game with the iPhone

Facebook Places: One check-in to rule them all

There was something very much in the vein of Utopian science-fiction fantasies to Facebook's announcement of "Places," its location-based "check-in" product that it launched on Wednesday night. (CNET was the first to report its impending debut last week.) In short, Facebook not only wants to be the digital sovereignty toward which all other geolocation apps direct their figurative roads, it also wants to be the Web's own omniscient historian.

"Too many of our human stories are still collecting dust on the shelves of our collections at home," Facebook vice president of product … Read more

Facebook's Foursquare competitor is imminent

The long-rumored geolocation "check-in" feature at Facebook is slated to debut within weeks, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNET.

It's going to take the form of an application programming interface (API) for third-party companies on the Facebook developer platform, integrating existing "check-in" start-ups more deeply into the massive social-networking service and in turn permitting location-aware data to become a part of existing platform applications.

Facebook declined to provide much detail. "We are working on location features and product integrations, which we'll be launching in the coming months, and we'll share … Read more

Are you worried about geolocation privacy? (poll)

Geolocation services--mobile applications that allow users to share their physical whereabouts with their networks--are gaining momentum. This week, Foursquare said it hit 100 million check-ins, with nearly 1 million "check-ins" per day. Earlier this year, Twitter added its own geotagging feature and now Facebook is reportedly working on its own.

But as these services gain speed, so too, it appears, do user privacy fears--at least according to a survey conducted by Webroot, a maker of antivirus and antispyware software.

Given the nature of Webroot's business, the company does have a vested interest in the topic. Nonetheless, the … Read more

Gowalla: We're still in the location race

It's been fewer than four months since the much-hyped "location wars" of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, where eager onlookers were quick to pit rival "check-in" services Foursquare and Gowalla against one another to see which one dominated the social-media-crazed nerdfest. Yet, by most accounts, Foursquare has emerged victorious.

Earlier this week, a set of statistics made the rounds claiming that Foursquare is now five times bigger than Gowalla and is growing 75 percent faster. A source in the location space added a tidbit in a conversation with CNET: not only is Foursquare winning … Read more

Fourwhere unites Foursquare, Yelp, and Gowalla listings

Aggregators are good not just for things like news, movie, and game ratings, but also for local knowledge. Yelp, Gowalla, and Foursquare have all made a business out of this, but up until now you've had to spend time bipping back and forth among them to glean knowledge from each service's members.

That's changed now with Fourwhere, a service that launched during South By Southwest, which now combines reviews and check-ins from all three services in one place. The end result is a single page you can visit to see the most recent local user activity at … Read more

Twitter adds option to tweet location by name

The new Twitter Places feature lets people tweet their specific location by name--whether it's the neighborhood tavern or the World Cup stadium in South Africa.

Unveiled Monday and launching in 65 countries over the next week, Twitter Places is the company's latest enhancement to its location-based tweeting service. People can now tag tweets with a specific location already stored in Twitter's database, add a new place, and see who else is tweeting from a specific area.

Tweeting location isn't a new concept for Twitter. The company's geotagging feature, which launched last year, lets people include … Read more

At SXSWi, Twitter may finally have met its match

AUSTIN, Texas--Has Twitter finally met its match? At the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival here this week, some would say the answer is yes.

With SXSWi in its final hours, a rumored 15,000 geeks have spent the last five days engaged in a never-ending series of panels, discussions, parties, and late-night prowling around.

Given that this group of people is on the digital cutting edge, SXSWi has for years been seen as the proving ground for social media applications. Make it here and you've got a shot at mainstream success. Fail to impress those at "South-by&… Read more