Facebook Places Totally 'Boring': Foursquare Honcho

Facebook Places may have some privacymongers shaking in their boots, but the guy who co-founded Foursquare isn't so scared. Dennis Crowley basically thinks it's pretty darn boring, he tells the Telegraph. “I have now had a chance to play around with Facebook Places and it’s not that great or interesting. It’s a pretty boring service, with barely any incentives for users to keep coming back and telling their friends where they are."

Actually, he sort of takes that back. There is one interesting component to Places: Its "potential audience of over 500 million people around the world … but that can only be a good thing for location-based services, like Foursquare, as Facebook will educate the masses about check-ins.” So Facebook will turn everyone on to the idea of checking in, then they'll realize they want a service that lets them be "mayor"? Basically. “Facebook could copy our games ideas, but we are working on a raft of new mechanics which we hope will keep Foursquare fresh and ‘check-in fatigue’ away." (More Facebook Places stories.)