Places

Checking In With Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley at Mobile World Congress (Video)

Ina Fried in Mobile on February 13, 2011 at 3:00 pm PT

At the outset of his first-ever trip to Barcelona for the big cellphone industry trade show, Foursquare’s chief executive sits down to talk about the future of his location-based service.

News Byte

Google's Hotpot Joins the Local Recommendation Crowd

Beth Callaghan in News on November 16, 2010 at 11:53 am PT

Google entered the local recommendation fray yesterday with the launch of Hotpot, and despite what the name implies, it’s not just for Chinese restaurants. Hotpot combines the 50 million listings in Google Places with user ratings and personalized recommendations, and it has the advantage of being attached to the world’s largest search engine–but it’s late to the game, and Yelp is already the dominant player, having amassed a huge database of reviews.

Hey Facebook, This Launch Better Not Be Boring

Liz Gannes in Social on November 15, 2010 at 1:09 am PT

Facebook on Monday plans to launch an email service for its users at a press event in San Francisco. The young company has really gotten way too into these show-and-tell events.

News Byte

AOL Tries Its "Best" in 25 Cities

Voices in News on October 13, 2010 at 9:12 am PT

AOL today kicked off its own “get out the vote” drive, but it has nothing to do with the fall elections. As part of its heightened local focus, the company is bringing back its City’s Best sites, last seen in 2008, in 25 U.S. metropolitan areas. From now through Nov. 30, site visitors will be encouraged to vote for the best local businesses in a variety of categories (Best Burgers, Best Dive Bars, Best Places to Break Up, etc.), creating a grassroots city guide in the process.

Viral Video: Facebook Live vs. Google Beat

Kara Swisher in News on September 7, 2010 at 12:15 am PT

While the Silicon Valley digital giants are fighting on much bigger playing fields, BoomTown is enjoying the mini-battle brewing between Facebook Live and Google Beat. What, pray tell, are those?

SCVNGR's Seth Priebatsch Talks About Geolocation Wars, Facebook Places and More!

Kara Swisher in News on August 30, 2010 at 9:00 am PT

Last week, SCVNGR integrated its third-party social geolocation game service into the Facebook Places mega-location offering. As it turned out, BoomTown was in Beantown–as in Boston–for a lovely wedding, so I took some prenuptial time to visit SCVNGR’s HQ in Cambridge, Mass., to talk to its founder, Seth Priebatsch.

Resistance Is Futile: SCVNGR Integrates With Facebook Places

Kara Swisher in News on August 27, 2010 at 7:00 am PT

SCVNGR, the mobile-social game, seems to be one of the first of many third-party social games to integrate with Facebook’s new Places location feature. In the launch last week, a series of start-ups in the geolocation arena announced their cooperation with the social networking site’s effort to include their services into the offering using its social graph APIs.

It's Still Too Early to Value Location Services, Businesses Say

Emily Glazer, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on August 25, 2010 at 10:34 am PT

Are location-based services going to be the next social-networking step for businesses? The big debate lately has been whether Facebook’s new location-sharing service, Places, will overwhelm pioneers like Foursquare. But the real question for the market may be how much businesses are willing to pay to use the services to connect with customers.

Say You, Say (Google) Me–When Will the Search Giant Get Social Graces?

Kara Swisher in News on August 25, 2010 at 8:16 am PT

We all want to be something else, don’t we? And so it is with Google, the robotic, algorithmic, black-box search behemoth girding the globe with datacenters stacked up to heaven. As it turns out, all it really wants is to be our friend. The big question is when it is going to do that, by introducing a social strategy that actually works, even as perceived rival Facebook barrels ahead.

The Problem With Places

Nitrozac and Snaggy in News on August 20, 2010 at 3:01 pm PT

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)

Viral Graphic: What If Solar Power Grew as Fast as Facebook? (Also Its Places Video!)

Kara Swisher in News, August 20, 2010 at 12:15 am PT

Red Bull Alert for Facebook Engineers: Mark Zuckerberg Promises Many More Feature Launches Coming Soon to a Social Network Near You!

Kara Swisher in News, August 19, 2010 at 11:20 am PT

AllThingsD by Writer