When Facebook Places, the long-awaited location-based mobile piece of the social Goliath, arrived the other week, the tech and mainstream media alike was a-buzz about the “Foursquare killer.” Only thing is Facebook had already said that Places would integrate data from the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla — executives from those services were actually at the public launch. Dave Marsey, senior vice president of media at Digitas, wisely suggested that although Facebook was bringing massive scale (the polite term for 500 million users) into the space, it wasn’t going to slay Foursquare and other networks, but lead the path ahead for mobile social.

“Places will put pressure on [location-based mobile social networks] to share more insights/data given Facebook’s 500 million user footprint and gives Facebook huge clout in setting the future strategy/direction for location based services,” he said.

Since the launch of Facebook Places, Foursquare has had nearly half a million signups, leaping from 2.6 million pre-Places to just 3 million last week. Apparently the company was expecting to hit that milestone in early September.

As the four days after the Places announcement marked Foursquare’s biggest growth spurt ever, Silicon Alley Insider makes this deduction:

“Mainstream media outlets deemed Places worthy of their attention. Virtually all of them described the service as a ‘Foursquare-killer.’ This left readers wondering: ‘what the hell is Foursquare?’ So they looked Foursquare up in Google, and many of these readers started an account.”

We digital folks world are so consumed in our world of apps and smartphones, we forget the American public isn’t always up to date with the latest marvels of technology. However, considering how much mainstream coverage Foursquare in particular has received (as well as a brutally hilarious Onion piece), I don’t think location-based mobile social networks were that much of a mystery.

At a cafe recently, I was joking with a industry guy about checking in on Foursquare (I think I’ve checked in four places total — I kinda like being at undisclosed locations.) and the barista overheard and asked if she could see the app. She’d heard about it but had never seen it in action, so I checked in and showed her the mayor of the cafe — “Oh yeah, she gets soy lattes here all the time,” the barista replied.

My guess is, like my barista, people knew about Foursquare and it’s location-based ilk, but Facebook Places legitimized it, made it safe for the masses. “I dunno about this location-based social networking — oh wait, Facebook’s got it? Well maybe it’s OK, I’ll set me up an account, hee hee hee. Check in at trendy bar… Oh wow, I got me a badge already!”

At an Ogilvy-hosted chummy panel discussion of location-based mobile social networks that included representatives from Foursquare, Buzzd, Loopt and BrightKite, I asked if it was feasible for so many moso networks to coexist — sure, the sector was in its infancy, but weren’t they going to start bumping shoulders as more mobile users checked in?

The general sentiment held that it was great how many different options mobile users had and they saw such diversity thriving in the future. In fact, as Places was still gathering speed on the rumor mill at the time, the participants were anticipating Facebook’s entry and excited about the attention it would bring the space. Seems pretty prescient now.

Interestingly, one moso guy expressed his displeasure that Facebook is akin to the Roman Empire of the online world — shouldn’t there be more competition? We can always wonder if News Corp. hadn’t bought MySpace and squeezed every dime of cheap display revenue instead of improving network functionality, would the two still be rivals? MySpace’s new layout and design changes are a bit too close to Facebook for comfort, but what if the network had made such changes years ago — when they would have been relevant?

Coulda, woulda, shoulda… MySpace’s ad revenue keeps sinking — it looks like the iceberg penetrated one hull too many. So we turn to the new challengers: Diaspora, with its ambitious approach to data privacy, and Google Me, which has piqued curiosity across the Internet.

However, on the mobile-social front, the population is already pretty mixed, and it appears the diverse ecosystem is going to survive for a while.

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