I won’t regurgitate what Techcrunch, Mashable and so many others had to say yesterday about Facebook’s announcement.  They were all great write-ups and I would suggest reading their fine analysis and points of view.

In short, foursquare won the check-in game. They beat Gowalla, Loopt, Google Places, Yelp! and of course the 700 million pound Gorilla, Facebook. This doesn’t surprise me. As I wrote a few weeks ago, foursquare understands Social For The Enterprise.  When you understand that aspect of social, you’ll get major organizations like Amex, Pepsi, Starbucks, Starwood and of course Walgreens to play ball with your platform.  What I mean by play ball, is that organizations are investing in foursquare, integrating into their campaigns and products, and in some cases making them the preferred partner to help drive their social and business strategy.

Ok, so now that we’ve officially proclaimed foursquare the king of check-ins, let me also say this:

The entire check-in concept and model is only 1 part of location based social marketing.  It’s a critical part, but to think that check-ins are in fact the answer to bringing social to the local level is to misunderstand consumer behavior.

The key here is consumer behavior.  Check-ins are a way of saying, “Hi, I’m here AND this is what I’m doing.”  There’s nothing wrong with that behavior.  foursquare has mastered how to make this behavior simple, fun and rewarding.

But, Facebook, though abandoning check-ins is showing that they understand the other end of the spectrum when it comes to the role that locations play in social media.  Check-ins are a forced behavior…they are.  And for that reason they appeal to a more limited audience.  Granted, that audience is probably at the top of the Forrester Technographics Ladder.  The mainstream social “network/media” user thinks about location in a very different way.  Location is about context.  What Facebook is doing is a rip off of what Google launched with Google+.  But, just because you copy something, doesn’t mean it can’t be better (VHS vs. Beta anyone?).

So what are they doing?  Well, they’re making location something that can be attached to virtually any piece of content shared on Facebook.  Think of it as tagging.  You can tag a status update, photo, etc.  For example, I could write a status update that says, “Heading out to Walgreens to pickup my prescription.”  The “Walgreens” portion can be tagged to a specific Walgreens location.  Keep in mind that’s a future event.  Cool, right?  When I upload a photo of an event or gathering, I can not not only tag the photos with the people who attended, but also the location of where we got together.  That’s a past event.  Facebook Places and foursquare focused on the I’m here RIGHT NOW aspect.  And Facebook lost that battle.  But, they may win the war, but allowing location context to be applied to just about anything.

Here’s what Facebook says on how this tagging will impact “deals” being offered:

Once someone tags where they are on Facebook, they will be directed to the News Feed. If the Place is offering a Check-in Deal, the title of the deal will appear below the News Feed story. You’ll then be able to click on the deal title and will then be taken to the claim flow.

As someone leading social for a large national retailer I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, this is yet ANOTHER change to the Facebook platform for us to understand, contend with, manage, explain and learn to leverage.  I’m not trying to be a whiner here.  But, put yourself into the shoes of someone in my role.

Imagine spending a year convincing your organization (up to the CMO) that check-ins were a key trend, that Facebook was betting big on this, that KPIs around check-ins were critical, that you needed to get in-store support for deals and check-ins.  Imagine spending a year beating a drum about the value of check-ins and how local + social was the future.  Imagine spending a year convincing Sr. leaders to download the Facebook app, start checking-in and redeeming deals.  Now, imagine writing an email to all of those people saying, “so…ummm, remember how I said Facebook was going to revolutionize the check-in game and how I said we needed to invest millions in in-store signage to promote check-ins and remember when I said we should bet on Facebook because they had scale and we should ignore those foursquare folks, well…forget all of that, I was wrong.”

This is the challenge of the social space and with working with Facebook.  The speed with which the space changes and Facebook changes their focus and rules is tough to keep up with.  This is why you have to choose your partners well and have a defined strategy.

On the flip side of the equation, this presents serious opportunity for brands because deals/offers are no longer limited to just people who check-in.  This could increase the awareness of deals exponentially.  It could let people become aware of those deals before they head into a store.  This creates greater competition and a reason for companies to bring better offers to the table; that’s a huge win across the board.

These continue to be interesting times for organizations and it’s a big reason why you have to have a well defined social strategy in place. If you don’t, you’ll just be constantly gasping for air, trying to play catch-up.  Game on.