Well it was bound to happen sooner or later. Facebook unveiled their new location check-in service called Places. Currently only available on phones that support W3 geolocation and apparently only to US based users – it sends a clear message to existing check-in service providers FourSquare and GoWalla – ‘watch out’. With 20% of existing FourSquare users who are already pushing their check-ins to Facebook creating the Places feature was a logical step. This will help Facebook capture those users and keep them on Facebook rather then use FourSquare. Granted not everyone will ditch FourSquare and to a lesser extent GoWalla, but you can rest assured both companies will see a significant decline in users in the coming months.

I am not sure this spells the end for the two services as Facebook hinted they may partner with FourSquare and GoWalla to help them populate the usage uptake for this utility within Facebook but it certainly doesn’t bode well. Ultimately any kind of possible partnership would only serve Facebook interests in the long run as users would get tired of checking in on two separate platforms. I simply can’t see any company who’s main business is check-in/location based services like FourSquare, GoWalla, Yelp et. al. competing against Facebook’s user base.

Essentially these companies simply served as ‘proof of concept’ and showed Facebook that this functionality does indeed warrant the expense in developing it. Indeed this feature has been 8 months in the making and was finally announced today so FourSquare and GoWalla had plenty of time to bulk up their offering to better compete against Facebook, but in the end I am afraid it will be an uphill battle. FourSquare should of taken that $100 million from Yahoo back in April, too late for that now. I guess time will tell if my predictions are correct or if FourSquare’s and GoWalla’s demise has been greatly exaggerated.

We’ve decided to launch a special contest for all Facebook game developers. Right now you can submit a review of your own game or application, we will randomly pick 2 of the best submissions and feature them on our site. The winning Facebook game reviews will get a 1 month spot in one of the 125×125 banner spots on the right hand side (A $25 value each). Your facebook game or application will also be displayed in our Featured Section and you will have your review placed at the top of the blog for an entire week! So if you think your game or app has what it takes to win then submit your review now! Anyone can enter and its FREE to participate, all you have to do is submit your app and review. We will collect submissions for one month before we make our decision so the contest deadline is September 12, 2010.

FBReview is site for Facebook Game and Application reviews, but today I decided to deviate from the norm and offer a movie review. Granted the movie hasn’t come out yet (so i’ll just review the trailer) but I promise as soon as I see the movie I’ll write a full review right here. The movie I am talking about is called The Social Network and if you don’t know by now its about Facebook. More accurately its about how Facebook got started. It talks about the accusations of Mark Zuckerberg who supposedly stole the idea of Facebook from other students who hired him to build it. Needless to say the movie should be pretty interesting. I especially like the pick of Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland, Superbad) as Mark Zuckerberg and Justin Timberlake as a high flying VC. The movie will be released in the US on October 1, 2010 and judging by the trailer its worth a watch, but you decide, here is a link to the official site and the trailer.

Download the FBReview Toolbar – stay connected to your Facebook account and get access to special offers.

We are proud to launch our very own FBReview Toolbar. The FREE FBReview Toolbar offers you exclusive facebook goodies and access to your facebook account. Stay connected to Facebook even when you are not on facebook. The FBReview Toolbar also offers you Twitter connectivity and quick access to all your favorite Zynga games! Instantly access Mafia Wars, FarmVille and much more directly from your browser. But wait the best is yet to come. We’ve decided to offer exclusive offers and tools ONLY to people who download and install our toolbar!

More Details about the FBReview Toolbar

Two major new developments from the Facebook Game Developer landscape, as Google sweeps down and buys development studio slide for $182 million. Slide is the maker of such popular applications as SuperPoke!, Slide Funspace and Top Friends. But with a price tag of $182 Million it seems a bit steep. After all Slide only has 1 million DAILY ACTIVE USER! That means that Google values a daily Facebook game user at a monstrous $180 bucks. Seems a bit high IMHO, but i’m sure Google is privy to information I don’t have and probably paid a premium for some reason or another. Just to compare this figure to Zynga’s 76.5 million daily active users it would value Zynga at $13.8 BILLION. Not sure how realistic this valuation is (since Google’s recent investment in Zynga values it about $6 Billion). Which makes you wonder why Google paid a premium for Slide.

This is the latest trends amongst large media companies trying to snap up development studios as more and more people spend more time playing facebook games.

Even the bigger studios have started cannibalizing smaller ones. Zynga just announced they will be buying Japanese studio Unoh for about $12 million. This new trend will be one to watch as the bigger studios will find it cheaper to buy existing games with existing users rather then just develop new ones from scratch. This acquisition also gives Zynga a much need break into the lucrative Japanese market which they currently have nearly no presence in.

This recent article sheds some light as to what almost 250 million people are doing on Facebook – They are playing games! No wonder Google recently invested $100 Million in Zynga and Disney recently paid $750 million to acquire Playdom. It seems major media conglomerates are starting to take notice that people spend most of thier time on social networks (and facebook in particular) playing games. This has huge implications for the way these companies display their ads. I wouldn’t be surprised if we started seeing more and more in-game advertising in the coming year.

Here is an excerpt from the news on the deal.

But the most interesting thing Pleasants noted was that he recently heard (from his own source, apparently) that half of all users on Facebook now play social games. More impressively, 40% of total usage time on the service is spent on these games. That’s meaningful, of course, because “a huge amount the Internet is on Facebook,” Pleasants stated.

Did you catch that? 40% of usage time! That’s huge! think about it for a second from a marketing point of view. You know that 250 million users spend 40% of their time on Facebook playing games! Now all you have to do is target advertising inside those games and you are all set to make a fortune!

Read the full article on TechCrunch

I know, I know this is old news, but its a pretty huge milestone and I just wanted to make sure its mentioned here. Last week facebook hit HALF A BILLION USERS! Which makes it THE premier social network and now even a major competitor to google. I suspect as time progress world war 3 will be faught online between Google and Facebook and all that will be over ad dollars. So get ready, its going to get interesting…

Here is a great video from Jesse Hirsh from this year’s FacebookCamp in Toronto.  He provides his views on why the top applications on Facebook succeed and what it takes to put together a great application. Definitely worth a peek.