Facebook Places is dead! And if you’re anything like me, you have no desire to send flowers.
Facebook Places was Facebook’s attempt to be more than… well… Facebook. They wanted to be like Foursquare — a service that allows users to voluntarily check themselves into a location and tell their friends where they are at any given time. Except Facebook being Facebook, they never gave any of us a chance to opt-IN to their clone of Foursquare. Rather, as “a convenience” they added all of us without our permission, forcing us to opt-OUT instead.
With most of us Facebook users having hundreds of “friends” who are not really “friends” at all, but rather aquaintances, we never bought into the concept of letting the person we sat behind in 3rd grade, or our boss know our whereabouts at all times. So basically, no one used Facebook Places. For months, it just sat there, unnecessary and awkward, popping up every now and then on our newsfeed. But no one cared. It was ignored.
So now, Facebook Places is dead. Sure, it will linger around for those stragglers to manually use if they choose. But no more automatic or “forced” use. Or to put it bluntly: DING DONG, THE WITCH IS DEAD!
