Facebook to Launch Foursquare Competitor on Wednesday?

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Jennifer Latkiewicz

After months of speculation, Facebook may finally be announcing its geo-location feature and Foursquare competitor tomorrow at a press conference held at its Silicon Valley headquarters, Boomtown‘s Kara Swisher reports.

According to Swisher, all signs point to an unveiling of a new “check-in” feature that will likely integrate existing third-party start-ups and give developers on Facebook’s platform geo-location capabilities.

Facebook has long been trying to figure out a way to capitalize on the location trend that was pioneered by Foursquare and start-ups like Loopt and Gowalla. According to CNET, Facebook even made an offer to acquire Foursquare before walking away from negotiations and deciding to go in-house. While originally announced earlier this year at Facebook’s f8 conference, the release of the location product had been put on hold to allow engineers to revamp the site’s simplified privacy settings.

Whether or not it’s announced at tomorrow’s press conference or four weeks from now, it seems that a Foursquare competitor from Facebook is imminent. As CNET puts it, “Facebook is the biggest force in the social Web by far, and it’s about to be the biggest force in geolocation, too.”