With Facebook Places now officially launched, sign ups to Foursquare have apparently increased due to the huge amount of comparison articles which have been published (no such thing as bad PR right?).  I couldn’t help noticing the influx of check-ins and questions on Twitter from individuals wanting to know whether they should sign up, all within 24 hours of Facebook’s announcement.  Until ‘Places’ actually kicks off in the UK, who knows what the backlash will be in terms of privacy, but I suspect this could be huge. This is because geo-location networking has, to date remained rather niche and now it is being brought to the masses – 36 million people in the UK to be correct.

Mass awareness does not equal mass adoption – it equals increase in fear factor

I have been using Foursquare for a while now and am pretty aware of the transparency of checking in and correlating this with other information I may give away about myself online. All my privacy settings are set and I use each of my networks for very different purposes (personal vs. business). My naivety was realised when I used a service called Wee Places a few weeks back (one of many similar services 4Mapper, 4sqMaps and Tripline) and saw exactly how I could track my day to day movements on a map – this technology is revealing –in a major way, and things will only get worse as mass awareness of data sharing ensues.

There will be, without doubt, a number of scare mongering stories that will emerge over the next coming months (there has already been a few re: The Guardian’s ‘How I became a cyber stalker’) but what will be interesting is how brands react to these. For those savvy enough not to be instantly scared off, there is still potential to use geo-location services as additional marketing channels, to nurture location specific fans, to track promotional offers and also be creative and have fun. The concern is however that this fan base will always be those who have got stuck in early (no fear sharers) or those who have signed up ‘to have a go’(part timers/deal hunters) – no real commitment to relationship building because this means giving too much away. But why care? By getting involved with these services you are still creating that channel (of course the business objectives/audience needs to be there) to push messages and offers – networking and community building can be left to a brand’s Page and/or website.

With this in mind, Facebook has taken their Places offering too far as they are pushing a networking element allowing you to tag friends with locations. The exploitation of this is pretty scary and really starts to infringe on personal networking space – both the real and the virtual.  No matter what, consumers will want to feel in control. Brands need to tread carefully and realise the limits to what they can do within these channels (whether it be Places, Foursquare, Gowalla) without scaring their fans/supporters off. It’s a fine line and I wait with baited breath for some of the horror stories that will emerge (I’m already a little freaked out by the Facebook Places Promo video below…)