Facebook acquires Hot Potato, Places could be about to get REALLY interesting.

Following on from its Places launch this week, it’s been announced that Facebook has acquired location-based service Hot Potato.

We raved about this service a few months ago. Essentially, it lets you check in to anything – events, books, TV shows, music  and the like. Now the service is to close, as Facebook takes its talent in-house.

In a blog post, the company explains:

“This wasn’t an easy decision, especially since we’ve built up a base of dedicated users. If Hot Potato was going to sell to anyone, Facebook was the natural choice. Facebook is still small, moves fast, provides a great supportive environment for people to be entrepreneurial, and most importantly, Facebook builds great products. We’re looking forward to joining their team.”

If you’ve been using Hot Potato, you’ve got “about a month” to export your data from the service before it closes for good.

Many people were surprised to see how simple Facebook’s Places service is at launch, allowing little more than checking in to locations. With the acquisition of Hot Potato, it looks like Facebook could be planning to expand further with check-ins to all sorts of media, events and beyond.

Where this would leave other startups in the field, like Get Glue, remains to be seen.