Hacker News Reader

Posting a status update with a location tag is the same thing as checking in at that location. You can tag people in your status updates, and coupled with a location, you can still tag people in with you.

The functionality that foursquare (and apps utilizing foursquare's API) offer are still possible, perhaps even easier.

Facebook is still going to win this part of the "war".

View on HN

Exactly. Facebook is not exiting the location game, but rather opening it up to a much broader audience.

I presume Facebook found that the people who used check-ins was a subset of the people that used tagging functionality, so they scrapped the check-in model and focused on making location accessible in a format that a) more people are comfortable with and b) is consistent with the rest of the Facebook experience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com