Facebook Places Launched - New Geo-location Feature

[tedster]

Facebook introduced a long-anticipated service called Places on Wednesday that could help the company tap local and small-business advertisers and sharpen its competition with Google.

Facebook's Places borrows heavily from location-based social networks like Foursquare and Gowalla, which allow users to check in at places and broadcast their location to friends. But those companies, as well as others like Yelp, said they saw Facebook's Places as a complement to their own services and as an opportunity to gain additional distribution.

[nytimes.com...]

[tedster]

This is the kind of Google competitor I think the web needs the most. Not another search engine (though that would be nice) but other companies who become dominant destinations for online users.

And isn't the comment from Foursquare fascinating. They were even at the announcement event. No steel cage death match with Facebook for them (smart).

<added>
Interesting privacy observations from the ACLU on the new Places feature.

Places allows your friends to tag you when they check in somewhere, and Facebook makes it very easy to say "yes" to allowing your friends to check in for you. But when it comes to opting out of that feature, you are only given a “not now” option (aka ask me again later). "No" isn't one of the easy options.

Facebook is rolling out "here now," privacy later.

[aclunc.org...]

[dudibob]

TBH, this feature actually sounds useful especially as the majority of my friends are the cliché facebookers.

If Facebook can stamp down on who can view what to protect peoples current location from strangers then may start using this myself when it comes to the UK.

[J_RaD]

if you are my friend and I want you to know where I am, i'll tell you.

[LifeinAsia]

Great- now in addition to hearing about all the mundane details of my friends' Farmville and Mafia Wars exploits, I get to follow them to all the seedy dives they frequent.

It's interesting that a lot of people who are very vocal about privacy issues with Google or the government have no qualms about telling the world every where they go (and when) and lots of other details that are more valuable to criminals.

[SEOMike]

"Friends can check me in to places." was set to "Enable" on my account. Glitch, or more underhanded FB games?

[tedster]

Facebook has built a record of "launch now, fix the privacy later". Remember Facebook's Lighthouse and the way it gave away the gifts you bought? This is more of the same casualness, IMO.

[Digmen1]

Facebook is great.
Just need to stop big fat cat corporations bidding $1 for a click - that is madness !
This local thing may help smaller companies.

[engine]

Facebook Places Uses Bing Maps [bing.com]

After listening to the rumor mills roar and authoring hundreds of emails with my friends at Facebook it can finally be said that Facebook has launched their location-based check-in service dubbed Facebook Places. And, while location-based services like this are certainly interesting to me I’m writing this for you because Facebook is using Bing Maps to pinpoint everyone’s location-based experiences on Facebook.com.

[engine]

if you are my friend and I want you to know where I am, i'll tell you.

I agree with that completely.

Where it is useful is the business aspect of it.

If it were possible to seperate the personal privacy from the social business marketing, it would be useful.

[ByronM]

What kind of friends do you have on facebook if you don't want them to be a part of your life? I love it when i checkin at a restaurant to find other people i know there.. that is part of being social. gah

[engine]

ByronM it's the privacy aspect that is the concern.

[LifeinAsia]

What kind of friends do you have on facebook if you don't want them to be a part of your life?

Being a part of my life and being my life are 2 different things. Personally, on FB I have some relatives, real friends (known for many years if not decades), some acquaintances, some friends of friends, and several people I've never met but know through friends of friends (or even more degrees removed).

Do I want my relatives to know every time I go to a restaurant. Maybe- but do THEY want to know or care? What if I tell a friend I have to cancel a get-together and then later get "outed" because of FB (well, that would probably be deserved from being stupid enough to check-in someplace when I made plans to be somewhere else).