Facebook Places

For those of you who have an iPhone I'm sure you have the Facebook App.  Well today Facebook updated their Iphone App with some changes made to Facebook Places.  Now instead of just checking in to where you are at you can actually check into events or check in to what you are doing at certain place.  You can check into parties so that people can see who's there and check into events like trivia at restaurants.  The other new feature is viewing a map and all of the people who have checked in around you show up on the map.  Apparently, there are some issues with the map feature and certain events showing up in the middle of the ocean, but those will be fixed in time.

But think about how beneficial this can be for marketers to see, not only everyone who was potentially invited to an event but also see who actually showed up.  This will give them age ranges, interests, and other useful information for marketers to more accurately define their target market.  I think Facebook has the upper-hand on the new fad of "checking in."  Most people use Facebook anyways making checking in very convenient as opposed to having a separate account with something like FourSquare.  Although you don't get the perks from Facebook Places like you do with FourSquare, checking in on Facebook does let all of your friends know what you are doing and where you are.

The question comes to mind after reading more about the details of Facebook Places: "are we giving marketers too much information and making it too easy for them to "sucker" consumers into making purchases?"