Facebook has launched its location-based Places service in the UK.
It allows people to "check in" wherever they are and see who among their friends and other Facebook users is - or has been - at the same location.
The service also lists nearby businesses and attractions, and Facebook will target the locations it lists to each Places user.
olias
1:27 pm on Sep 17, 2010 (gmt 0)
Interesting stuff. Does anyone have a clue where they have got their initial seed data from? It seems very low quality and I'm seeing no sign of place information that they may have got from mine and other sites via the Graph API/Like Button
ChanandlerBong
8:41 pm on Sep 17, 2010 (gmt 0)
Facebook Places Launches In UK 3 hours ago · Comment · Like Cat Burglar likes this.
Robert Charlton
2:35 am on Sep 18, 2010 (gmt 0)
The article quotes a security expert who doesn't like the way the system is currently set up....
"By default, users are opted in to the ability to be tagged by their friends, they are opted in to allowing their friends' Facebook apps to access their location information, and they are opted in to allowing 'non-friends' checked-in to the same place to see their whereabouts.
"This is all backwards - this should be deployed on a purely opt-in basis and no information about my whereabouts should be posted without my explicit consent, every single time a post is made."
Amazing that FB keeps doing this, isn't it?
creative craig
9:49 am on Sep 20, 2010 (gmt 0)
They figure if Google can get away with auto opt-in then so can they!
mack
11:16 am on Sep 20, 2010 (gmt 0)
Having seen a few friends make posts displaying their street as their location I don't see any good coming from this.
