Ah, check-ins. You’ve taken the world as we know it by storm. Who doesn’t want to know where their friends and families are at any given point in the day? And after Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, and more have all offered up their own check-in platform, Google felt it was necessary to follow suit.

Today, they introduced version 5.1 of Google Maps that adds check-in features to the Latitude portion of the application. It’s no ordinary service either: check-outs also come into play, doubling the social location-aware experience. Automatic check-ins are a pretty nice deal, too.

Will you use it though? There are no deals, no badges, and no tie-ins to social networks. Unless a majority of your friends are on Google Latitude, this service seems kind of dull on paper. That’s no reason to not get excited, though: things could easily change as time moves on. (We know Google’s looking to be a major player in that “deals” category, anyway, as evidenced by their failed acquisition of Groupon.)

Big Latitude fans will love this, but for the rest of you it’s going to be a novelty feature. Check it out anyway by searching for the update in the Android market. [via Google]