• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 28, 2010

Asked about Facebook Places, Frank O'Brien, founder of marketing and design firm Coversation, said the new Facebook location service still had bugs to work out since the company rolled it out without having every detail nailed down to keep pace with established competitors like Foursquare and Gowalla. Speaking on an agency panel at the Mobile Summit, he pointed out, for example, that the technology to easily connect a brand's existing Facebook Page with a Place page isn't there yet.

That said, he noted that "Facebook Places is where brands will play more than other applications." He sees rivals like Foursquare and Gowalla becoming niche plays, likening them to the location-based equivalent of MySpace and Friendster following the rapid rise of Facebook. That's another way of saying they're about to become also-rans.