Who wins the ‘Check-In Wars’?
People might disagree, but right now I think Check.in wins. Read on for my reasoning.
So far the new Facebook Places check-in is a one way street. You can check-in, but it doesn’t check-out. Basically, that means that if you use Facebook’s Places feature to check into your location, it doesn’t update your other location apps (Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp, etc.).
BUT, if you use a service like Check.in (ironically, from one of the only partners left out of the FB Places announcement - Brightkite), then you can update all your services at once (sans Yelp…for now).
An example using FB Places might go like this:
Walk into a restaurant and whip out the iPhone to use the FB app and check in. This updates my FB Places status on FB only. I’m then left with using all the other services individually to check into them because FB Places is a one-way street.
On the other hand, an example of using Check.in goes like this:
Walk into a restaurant and whip out the iPhone to use the Check.in web app. This updates my location apps: Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Whrrrl, & now Facebook - all at once.
I’m not sure what this all means and Facebook might make some changes in the future. But, for now, I think it’s a bit short sighted on somebody’s part.
