Facebook Place Tips Copies Foursquare - Place Tips = Friends Nearby + Facebook Places Geo-Location Stalker Tool

“We want to be really confident if we’re going to show you something at the top of your News Feed. As we started building this, we realized we need more confidence to show you the right and relevant things”

Facebook Product Manager Mike LeBeau, commenting on the Facebook Place Tips feature launched on Thursday January 29^th2015

Facebook, on the heels of its Earnings Call that indicates that 84%t of its 890 million daily users are on smartphones as noted in “Facebook mobile users hit new highs, revenue jumps”, published January 28, 2015 1:12 PM PST by Ian Sherr, CNET News,  has decided to take yet another stab at Yelp and TripAdvisor.

This as they're in the process of testing out a new Feature called Place Tips as reported in the article “Facebook dives deeper into Yelp, Foursquare world with Place Tips”, January 29, 2015 10:03 AM PST, by Donna Tam, CNET News.

So says their Press Release explaining the planned new feature titled “Introducing Place Tips in News Feed”, published January 29, 2015 By Mike LeBeau, Product Manager, NewsRoom.

Facebook Place Tips dips into Open Graph data culled from postings on a Facebook Business Page for a location i.e. a Restaurant or a bar as well as photos posted by your friend who have visited that same place.

Once you've enable Facebook to track your location via GPS, whenever you visit the place your friend have been, Facebook will serve up not only the Facebook Page for that business but also the related posts and Pictures from your friends.

Currently the feature only works on the Apple iPhone and is only available for New Yorkers only, sorta like Foursqure’s swarm App  as explained in my blog article entitled “Foursquare splits into Foursquare and Swarm - Twitter-eqsue Restaurant Recommendations while Tracking Friend's Feeds and Plans as the Real Beat Comes Alive”.

Also it determines your location based on a combination of Cellular, Wi-Fi and GPS Networks to determine your location.

Still, Facebook Place tips will fail just like the Poke App and then Slingshot, being slowly beaten by Snapchat and Microsoft Upstart Xim as opined in my blog article entitled “Microsoft launches Microsoft Xim, Snapchat's true Competition - How Slingshot backfired and Microsoft Xim makes Conscious Shared Slideshow Experience Fun”.

Facebook Place Tips sounds like Foursquare – Why a Friends Nearby + Facebook Places will fail like SlingShot

Facebook Place Tips feature is basically a lot like Facebook Places launched in December 2014 as reported in my blog article entitled “Facebook relaunches Facebook Places – Return of Facebook Places heralds Yelp and TripAdisvor Killer putting Foursquare-Instagram LBS deal in Jeopardy”.

It's also kinda similar to Facebook Friends Nearby launched in April 2014 as described in my blog article entitled “Facebook launches Nearby Friends feature - WhatsApp VoIP and Oculus Rift VR Wearable Computing Takes flight as FB look towards the Future in the Year of the Horse”.

I suspect Facebook may actually be grasping at straws here based on the comments by Facebook Product Manager Mike LeBeau in the article “Facebook Place Tips will try to put useful info about your location right into the News Feed”, published January 29, 2015 01:00 pm by Nathan Ingraham, The Verge, quote: “News Feed today is a pretty good tool at connecting you to friends and news. But if we’re Facebook and our job is to connect the world, what else do we want to connect you to?”.

Possibly the slow uptake of Facebook Friends Nearby as well as Facebook Places may have prompted them to merge the two. Facebook, albeit they’ve noticed more revenue from Mobile users, probably realize that not all their Mobile Apps are pulling their weight.

Thus don’t be surprised if Facebook Friends Nearby and  Facebook Places eventually get the axe later in 2015!

Facebook ignoring Foursquare Swarm – Facebook Place Tips is a Geo-Location Stalker tool

However, they need to take a page from Foursquare's book, who recently revamped their App to have a separate Swarm App that's a recommendation engine based on Reviewers, not friends as noted in my blog article entitled “Foursquare splits into Foursquare and Swarm - Twitter-eqsue Restaurant Recommendations while Tracking Friend's Feeds and Plans as the Real Beat Comes Alive”.

Simply put, having friend recommend where you should eat and drink is really a recipe for disaster. True friends in real life don’t stalk each other, even on Social Media. We’re not really interested in where you‘ve been or what you may have been doing!

Effectively Facebook Place Tips, in an attempt to palm itself off as a LBS (Location Based Service) like Friends Nearby, can become a stalker tool as a friend in a Social Network does not guarantee that they’re also your true friend in real life.

Hopefully too, Facebook won't sell your information and travel habits to advertisers, as this is actually what Facebook Place Tips actually sounds like.