I’m honestly pretty excited about the Facebook integration at the Ushuaïa Beach Hotel in Ibiza. Yes, it might give me an excuse (as if I need one) to hit the clubs and do some “research” for “work.” But more importantly it allows people to update their social networking profiles without staring blankly at their devices (iPhones, Androids, crackberries, etc.).

Maybe it’s just a personal pet-peeve, but waiting to start your breakfast, lunch, dinner, birthday party, Bar Mitzvah or wedding because a friend “needs” to check-in to FourSquare first is a serious drag. Multiply that by the number of social networks they feel compelled to update and it’s damn-near unbearable. Hence the reason I’ve been such a fan of passive location tracking and broadcasting – such as Google Latitude or even cellular network location services.

The implementation at Ushuaïa looks to be a custom designed, one-off setup that I’m sure took many days and weeks to plan, build and code. However, imagine a service that would allow you to pre-authorize check-ins, likes, posts, whatever simply by waving your phone, watch, bracelet, subdermal microchip, etc in front of a nifty “Like Box.” If the boxes were abundant enough (and cheap enough) then stores, restaurants, art galleries, museums, etc. could easily integrate social media (read “social marketing”) into the core customer experience at their location. Now that’s a world I’d like to live in…