Perhaps one of the best features of Facebook Places was not released with the initial launch … Looking back at the Facebook Places official video, the most compelling selling point is that Facebook helps you digitalize your memories. The fact that you can geo-tag and timestamp photos, videos, and comments, allows you to live back any memories, knowing what you saw, how you felt, who you were with …

Imagine if you were in Hawaii for your honeymoon, taking a cruise to all the different islands … now imagine if each photo had a geo-tag, and a time stamp, and you could comment and add your thoughts and feelings … Facebook places would be the platform to help you re-live this experience, follow your path or trace … but also, what if you come back 5 years from now, to the same place … how nice would it be to match it to your previous experiences? Or how about you go to Disney parks, and you need advice on the rides for your new kids … you can see comments your friends made in previous experiences, recommendations, reviews … ditto for restaurants … you get the point.

Facebook hasn’t made it official, but while I was lecturing last night at the Miami Ad School, I checked in, later on visited the place page, and I noticed that there’s a section titled “Photo Memories“.

Geo-tagging rich content is a huge differentiator against the currently actively vocal by desperation Dennis Crowley, Foursquare’s CEO. Let the memories begin.

Current predictions:

• Apple will launch a new iOS based device priced at $99
• The iTV will only have 16Gb of Flash based storage
• It will mainly stream content from a local computer or the cloud
• It’s only capable of 720p as opposed to 1080p
• Apple is negotiating 99 cents rentals, down from $1.99 to $2.99, or even higher for HD. This will also apply for iPhone, iTouch, and iPad content consumption.
• The device will have a built-in camera, or will be able to connect to one and run FaceTime.
• iOS will run apps

Extending on this last point: Apps … brands, marketers, advertisers, or any experience designer, this is the big question … How will they work? Can you run existing apps in the big screen? but if you do, the big screen is not multitouch, damn, it’s not even touch! You will need a special control just to point and click …

So perhaps you can’t run the same apps in the big screen … and you know, maybe it’s better if we don’t … the screen apps are content companions … the main purpose of the TV is not to run apps, but apps are there to extend and amplify the experience of TV content consumption.

Apps could run on sidebars, overlays, show and hide, or a number of different visual options; but in order for them not to be dump widgets — i.e. a weather widget — they will need to be connected, obviously, but also have contextual information of the content you’re watching. Imagine apps that allow friends to chat about content, possibly with FaceTime, but also interact with other friends watching the same show … enable co-watching experiences. Leave timestamped messages into content, or be pre-loaded with metadata about the content and let you explore more info about actors, places, sets, products … even let you click to buy the products you’re watching … The possibilities are endless.

Check out the official teaser video for Facebook places. What I really love about it is that it maps exactly to SapientNitro’s PoV on the space-time continuum for experience mapping; in layman terms what we believe is that every moment should cross space and time. A moment crosses spacewhen multiple people in different locations can live the same moment .. for example,  you share a live video feed, lifecast, share status updates, photos, and your friends all over the world can interact with this content in real time. A moment crosses time when you can geo-tag content and you can interact with the same content any time in the future when you’re in the same location … or if your friends visit the same location, can could see your previous experiences in that place.

Everything we do, we do with a mindset of digital amplification through space and time … and Facebook places is just, exactly, that. This can really be huge.

Why to Check In? by Facebook.

Earlier today Facebook finally announced the official launch of Facebook places. Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, and others covered it live, but if you missed the announcement, here’s what you have to know.

BTW, one thing no one is talking about yet is Places within the Graph API. You can query recent checkins by users, pages, places: GET https://graph.facebook.com/[place/Page/user_id]/checkins

That alone is SO powerful!

Anyways, starting today, you can immediately tell people about that favorite spot with Facebook Places. You can share where you are and the friends you’re with in real time from your mobile device.

Checking In with Friends

Ever gone to a show, only to find out afterward that your friends were there too? With Places, you can discover moments when you and your friends are at the same place at the same time.

You have the option to share your location by “checking in” to that place and letting friends know where you are. You can easily see if any of your friends have also chosen to check in nearby.

To get started, you’ll need the most recent version of the Facebook application for iPhone. You also can access Places from touch.facebook.com if your mobile browser supports HTML 5 and geolocation.

Go to Places on the iPhone application or touch.facebook.com site and then tap the “Check In” button. You’ll see a list of places near you. Choose the place that matches where you are. If it’s not on the list, search for it or add it. After checking in, your check-in will create a story in your friends’ News Feeds and show up in the Recent Activity section on the page for that place.

Places is only available in the United States right now. But we expect to make it available to more countries and on additional mobile platforms soon.

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Great presentation / stats / numbers of the current state, size, and uses of the Internet.

The main stats were:

• Email usage will shrink :: 247 billion emails sent per day, 200 are spam + growing trend of using social networks to communicate
• Women are social :: 84% social sites with more women than men
• 27MM tweets per day – has nothing on Facebook statuses
• Facebook has 260 Billion page views per month vs MySpace at 24 Billion
• Flickr hosts 4 Billion photos – Facebook gets 2.5 Billion new photos per month
• Youtube gets 1 Billion video views per day
• Hulu gets 1 Billion video views per month