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Facebook takes on Foursquare

The Facebook news du-jour comes with the long-awaited announcement of new location-based service Facebook Places that lets users to check-in to places, share their whereabouts with friends and connect with nearby friends via their mobile.
Quite rightly, comparisons have been drawn to its similarity to current mobile check-in fave Foursquare. While Foursquare boasts a gaming aspect with the collection of badges and mayorships earned through frequency of check-ins, will this ultimately become enough of a differentiator? True, Foursquare has seen a temporary lift in subscribers since it rolled into Places along with GoWalla and Booyah but surely in the longer term users will tire of duplicate check-ins. Foursquare is not shy of users with approx 2 million total users, 1.5 million of whom are based in the US but compare that to the scale of Facebook and we can’t help but wonder if Foursquare now looks differently on the suggested buy-out from Facebook which didn’t meet the required purchase price of $150m.
Nearly one-third of Facebook’s traffic is generated from mobiles, geo-location is clearly a natural progression and could be just the ticket to catapult location-based services into the mainstream which is huge news – not least for marketers.

In other Facebook news we’ve been having a chat with PPA about Facebook Campaigns for their article Facebook: How to win friends and influence people, take a look at the full article here.

Online TV viewing continues to grow

An NMA internet TV audience survey conduced by Lightspeed Research revealed more than half of TV viewers catch up online. “Almost three-fifths (58%) had streamed or downloaded TV within the last six month, 45% of whom said they watch or download TV content at least once a week.” More interesting stats over on NMA.

Can you Digg it?

They’re having a few teething problems with downtime and bugs, but a new version of social site Digg has been launched after a month of testing to invite only users. Digg hope to combat a decline in users in the last year by keeping up with the Joneses, and surprise, surprise, adopting aspects of Twitter and Facebook.
As well as a new interface, it’s now easier for users to view submissions from their friends and people they specifically want to see, in a custom built homepage called “My News”. Users can attach their blog or RSS feed to their profile and send the content to their followers as they create it. Digg Version 4 is still a work in progress according Kevin Rose on the Digg blog. ‘This redesign is a major revision of our platform – front end to back end – this is just phase one of what will be an on-going, iterative process, involving lots of input from all of you. We’ll be pushing out features on a regular basis and tweaking often’. Check Digg’s video walkthrough.

News of the World Order

News of the World are to introduce a paywall for their online content by October, along with a major overhaul of the site and a high profile marketing campaign. It’s expected that an introductory rate will be charged for the first month then a daily, weekly or monthly subscription. We reported back in July that The Times online had lost two thirds of it’s readership after introducing a paywall. Many predict the News of the World will fare no better despite access to added benefits including exclusive video footage and a phone app to help encourage subscribers. Data from ComScore shows News of the World received 1.1 million unique visitors in July, viewing 14 million pages for an average of 8.1 minutes a visit.

Stuff on the web we think you might like

12 second strip: Renault are encouraging us all to get our kit off in 12 seconds which is the same time it takes its new mini Roadster to drop its roof.

Ultimate Family Hero: Transform your favorite family member into an online superhero with Volkswagon.

56 Sage Street: Barclays cute online game, part of their Money Skills project, aims to educate kids on how to handle money.