It was supposed to be the Foursquare killer but I guess it never really took off. Facebook Places is no more. The idea was to let users “check in” at various places and collect special offers and coupons and such. But if people were really into that, they would just go to Foursquare or Gowalla.

It’s an age-old internet axiom but it keeps holding up:
STAY IN YOUR LANE.

Foursquare wouldn’t be able to launch a Twitter imitator, Twitter couldn’t make a go of a search engine, Google is struggling in social, Facebook can’t be Foursquare. IT’S THE CIRCLE OF LIFE.

Facebook apparently gets that and will keep having location information displayed, if you want to, in your status updates. So you might tell people where you are and see who else is there but it’s not a shopping thing and no one becomes mayor of anything, it’s just status updates.