Facebook Places:  The Monster has been fed.

So there I was a bachelor for the night (Kyra and the kids are in NOVA, their annual pilgrimage to the Price William County Fair) and I stumbled on a new production of Live from Lincoln Center.  They were doing South Pacific with Kelli O’Hara and the closet Broadway freak that I am was ready to settle into “One Enchanted Evening.”

One last Twitter check.

A mad dash to the computer later and I was watching “Mark Z. and the FB’s” clad in their t-shirt and denim best launching the supposed “geo-location” killer, Facebook Places.”

For those not knowing what the hell I’m talking about Facebook today will add a service that will allow you to use your mobile device to “check in” and tell everyone where you are.  Similar services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Yelp have grown by leaps and bounds over the last year.  They offer people the chance to review, get discounts from and get credit for checking into places like parks, stores, restaurants, etc.  They act as least as “updaters” letting your friends know where you are, and at most business tools as retailers offer real-life incentives to check in from their location.

But it was assumed by some that Facebook Places would be the category killer, putting the rest out of business.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Facebook Forum.  One by one during this event, leaders from Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and game maker Booyah, joined the FB’s on stages pledging allegiance and telling those watching how they plan to feed their information to Facebook Places and incorporate it into their services.

The Facebook monster was fed and licking its chops.  Not only will it’s 500 members be able to play but everyone can including those already playing elsewhere.

While I haven’t seen Places yet (I checked for the update on my Droid this morning) and I haven’t been afforded the media preview like WSJ’s Walt Mossberg and analyst Michael Gartenberg (full disclosure Michael is an old High School friend of mine, he’s great).  Here are some initial thoughts from a business and PR perspective.

• Like those other services, you will be able to check in on Places so people will know where you are.  Unlike those others, you will be able to see which of all of your FB friends are already there or close by.  For businesses this is important because checking in now takes on even added importance as a traffic driver.
• You will be able to tell others what you are doing and tag friends who are with you thereby creating a “narrative of sorts.”  This dialogue/living history aspect is extremely important and I’ll get back to that in a second.
• When you check into a place, a Places Page is created and a “living history” of that page is started.  As they explained, you will be able to tap into that page to see who else is there, has been their, what they did, what they ordered, what they liked, what they didn’t, the photos they took.  Not only that day but for years to come.  THIS IS IMPORTANT from a business and PR perspective as now we will need to add these pages to the list of things we will need to monitor online.   It wasn’t till they were asked directly by the media did the FB’s fess up that businesses can “claim” these pages as their own to help in the monitoring process.
• And of course, Facebook will open the API, or the ability for others to tap into Place to create APPS and games and the like.

While he sidestepped the “how will Facebook make money from Places” question, Eric Z. left the door wide open for more additions to the service that will allow businesses to use it to their advantage at a price.  Shocking.

It was interesting to watch all this unfold in front of me and while on Day One we don’t have all the answers about how this will rock our social media world, it did strike me at how Facebook will likely be at its core for years to come.  Their vision as articulated from the stage last night is that years from now, someone with check into Places and images from when their parents were there years before will pop up.  You will be able to see what they did, the picture they took, etc.

It’s clear that Facebook  is not going away.  After all, last night the monster was fed….again.

Your thoughts?