Facebook rolls out Suggested Events, but you probably wont use them

The arguments for and against using Facebook location checkins have been numerous. Unfortunately for the service, there hasnt yet been a good reason to actually compel you toward checking in with Facebook versus Foursquare or some other alternative. It appears, though, that Facebook is now rolling out Suggested Events based on not only where your friends are going, but also what youve done in the past.

The obvious problem, of course, is that its asking you to check in via Facebook, instead of what youre using right now. Or at the very least its asking you to make sure that whatever youre using is connected via Facebook. If you havent done either, what youre going to see is a list of places where your friends are planning to be, which isnt much of a suggestion beyond what you could find for yourself.

What will be interesting to see is how the service utilizes Facebooks recent acquisition of Gowalla. TNWs Drew Olanoff, at the time of the deal, said that Facebook had snagged Gowalla in order to beef up Timeline. Clearly, if youre actually planning for, checking in to and then posting from events all inside of Facebook (or its respectiv! e mobile apps) then your Timeline is going to look a whole lot more complete than the boring ones of those of us who simply look down our noses at our former high school friends.

Unfortunately, as Robert Scoble points out, you still cant bring in your Foursquare checkins to Facebook. For many of us, that leaves the feature useless and it puts Facebook into the position of once again attempting to change user behavior.