It's unlikely that the majority of MyTown, Foursquare, or Gowalla users have ever heard of Localeze, yet the business listings directory could be about to sign a deal with Facebook that pushes the social network firmly into the location-based arena.

Chatter suggests the social network has been making moves towards offering a location-based set-up – dubbed 'Places' – for some months, although the fallacy of such a drive was a lack of any kind of location data to back up the service.

In light of this, TechCrunch reports Facebook has approached Localeze – which aided Twitter in its recent location roll-out – to serve up such data, with the firm having generated a 14 million business strong database since it was formed nine years ago.

The check-in question

Speculation suggests the software could initially be implemented to generate fan pages for businesses and commercial ventures, with actual check-ins – which would move Facebook firmly into location-based service territory – having been delayed due to the privacy concerns the network has had to deal with of late.

Nonetheless, it's no great stretch to imagine such a setup being implemented on Facebook's various mobile offerings – web and app based – in the near future.

Such a move would automatically supersede the current market leaders by some distance, with MyTown's 2.5 million strong userbase overshadowed somewhat by Facebook's 400 million plus user accounts.

The venture wouldn't be a departure for Localeze, either, with the firm having also signed agreements with the likes of Apple, Yahoo! and Bing in the past.
TechCrunch