Google has indicated it’s going to be working with developers on checkins for location-based applications through its Places API.
This spring, Google(
) announced Places as a revamping of its local and local-business listings. Originally, we saw Places as a SEM/user review mechanism, perhaps a Yelp(
) competitor.
However, with the recent preview of the Google Places API at Google I/O, the company showed developers a whole world of geographical, commercial and social information attached to each Place on its vast radar.
In a May blog post, Maps API Product Manager Thor Mitchell wrote, “Each Place Page consolidates together everything we know about a single Place, be it a business, point of interest, or geographical feature such as a city or neighbourhood. We believe that this unified concept of Places more accurately reflects the way that Maps users see the world, and are working to bring an awareness of Places to the Google Maps API.”
Based on developers’ interest in the Places API, Google is going to begin offering access to certain apps. Mitchell wrote today that while his team has seen “applications looking to show a user Places around them and applications looking to offer a search and browse experience for Places similar to that offered on Google Maps(),” what intrigued the company most were the applications that offered a checkin function — easily one of the hottest features of present-day social media.
“We are going to focus initially on check-in applications,” Mitchell continued. “These are the applications that we feel the API currently caters to well, and we are excited to work with developers building these applications to understand their requirements, and ensure that we are offering them the best possible experience… We have now begun reaching out to developers who have expressed an interest in building checkin applications using the API, including those working on client applications for the Buzz API.”
We can’t wait to see who gets to work with the Places API and what kinds of apps they build. Devs, what do you expect to come from Google’s interest in checkins?
And what do you think this new direction bodes for Latitude? Could a better, Places-based app take its place as Google’s de facto location-based service?
Hat-Tip to Mashable.com
