When Facebook Places came out, many thought that it would quickly surpass FourSquare as the premier geo-location tool in the market. But, we may have over-estimated the desire for geo-location in general. After the initial fad ran out, the pure utilitarian value of the tool didn’t seem to create enough virality.
But with Facebook Deals and other crowd-sourcing and crowd-couponing add-ons being added, Google Latitude is finally getting into the game. Built in with the Android phone, Google Latitude is hoping to add enough social layers to this tool to jump out into the geo-location lead. And with Android phones now becoming the most popular mobile operating system in the world, maybe it could happen? But after being wrong about Facebook Places, we’re playing it safe and saying that geo check-ins aren’t ever going to be as big as they seem cool.