Over the past few months, Facebook has come out with what two great features – Places and redesigned Groups. The only problem, however, is Places really only appears on the iPhone app and mobile website, while Groups can only be accessed from the full, non-mobile site. The two features, however, would work together perfectly, hence, Mappr.
Mappr brings two of Facebook’s best recent additions together, allowing you to check-in without sharing it with everyone on Facebook – exactly what groups were made for.
The blog post introducing the new feature describes it as a way to “share great places with people of similar interests”:
Facebook groups are great for organizing strangers around common interests, and Mappr is perfect to share info on the great places for the group. Using the Mappr app, you can filter to see just places where a particular group has checked in. Adding a group to a check-in provides a great way to help other group members find these places.
The app took just a minute to set up, allowing me to connect with my Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter accounts. It displays places by map and list view, showing a star where Foursquare specials are available, and has all the Foursquare tips.
If you have Facebook and Foursquare linked so that Foursquare check-ins automatically show up on Facebook, you can now determine a group for that check-in to appear in. That is, your night club check-in can show up on a group for close friends and your convention center check-in can clue in your coworkers without boring your friends.
One of the biggest problems with all of these cross-posting services is context. Just because I want to link Foursquare to Facebook doesn’t mean I want everything broadcast to everyone. Go to a geek convention and suddenly you’re checking in 20 times a day and driving all of your non-techie Facebook friends crazy – this offers a solution for that.
Even beyond not driving people crazy, the ability to confine your check-in updates on Facebook to different groups of people allows for a granular control not available in popular location-based check-in apps like Foursquare or Gowalla. Quickly create a Facebook group for an event and suddenly all of your check-ins can be kept within that group. Mappr just broke a barrier with Facebook Places that we can only hope other LBS apps follow…and soon.
Mappr is available for download in the iTunes App Store.
