Facebook Head of Groups Justin Shaffer told attendees at Where 2.0 that one of Facebook’s goal is to develop the largest database of “interesting” places. The collection of places has “really been the focus” of his division for the past four-to-six months he said. At the same time, the database of places is probably something of a commodity for Facebook, and other services. “The coordinates are approaching a commodity. But (we’re) pushing up the stack with services etc.”
Shaffer, former CEO of Hot Potato, a group software site acquired last year by Facebook, said that a “social network” involves storytelling, memories and serendipity. The latter is “where friends check in and find you.” He added that a social network itself can be broken down into three basic elements: “Open,” “Geo” and “Temporal.”
Open would mean your social network acquaintances; Geo would be a friend’s photo of the Eiffel Tower; and Temporal would show the four people that are “here” right now. The importance of Check-ins is “not really where you are, (it is about) who you are with,” he said.
Content-wise, it all splits into the “Open Graph,” “Data” and “businesses.” Data would include places and events, and businesses would include check-in deals and pages. While it would be ultimately helpful to develop standards, Shaffer warned that “everyone isn’t going to agree on meta data or categories.”
Speaking on a panel with Shaffer at Where, Fwix CEO Darian Shirazi, who has just raised a new $4.2 million round from Comcast Interactive Capital, agreed that the basic information is probably approaching commodity status. The challenge is to build a package that it unbeatable, said Shirazi. A listing of “The Top 10 Bars in San Francisco” would be an example.
Content, and geo-tagging of content, “is where this will realistically go,” added Shirazi. Fwix, a 22 person company that started two years ago as a news aggregator, is now expanding into vertical content areas such as real estate and video transcriptions. If Fwix could use places data to win even one percent of Google search results, it would be “huge,” he said.
I’d caution against engaging in any discourse that’s founded upon the assumption that “first principles” have been established. Belief that you’ve identified the “commodities” are, have found the “bottom of the stack” and all that’s left is “going up” – especially after 4 to 6 months – is destined to make any suppositions based on that guaranteed to be wonky. Quantum physics anyone? The Top Ten Bars in San Francisco pales in comparison to the Top Ten Martinis in San Francisco.