“Places,” Facebook’s response to the wildly successful start-up Foursuqare, is now being phased out according to a recent blog post from the folks at Team Zuckerberg.

The mobile feature, which allowed travelers to “check-in” at locations all over the world, never quite caught on like Facbook had hoped. Some reports indicated that two months after its launch, only 30 million people (a paltry six percent of Facebook’s enormous user base) had used the “check-in” feature at least once.

While Facebook may be admitting defeat to Foursquare for the title of Mobile Check-In King, this is far from the end of Facebook’s foray into location-based updates.

Instead of a dedicated check-in feature, Faceboook will now encourage users to share their location whenever they share a photo, status update, or Wall post. Unlike Places, the new location features will be available across all of Facebook’s platforms, not just the mobile version.

Source: Huffington Post

Flickr: David Armano