Facebook Places Begins

Facebook released their newest feature, “Places”, during a Wednesday news conference.

Places is designed to emulate popular location-based social media such as Foursquare and Yelp. According to Facebook representatives, users will be able to click a “Check-In” button. Each check-in will appear on that location’s Facebook page, on the user’s profile page, and on their friends’ News Feeds. Additionally, friends can tag other people just like Facebook’s photos can handle multiple people in one picture. The friends’ tag feature can also be removed by users for privacy. Friends will be unable to tag users unless users consent to it first.

Places will require a Facebook iPhone application or logging into the Facebook smart phone website. For users of a smart phone other than the iPhone, GPS auto-location is necessary for Places to work. Most recent smart phones have a GPS feature capable of using Places. Users should now see a new Places tab on the Facebook home page for smart phones.

Unlike Foursquare and Yelp, Facebook’s Places does not feature competitive elements for regular visits to certain locations. Facebook did not comment about the possibility of including those type of features at a later date. However, Facebook does support additional applications based upon locations. A number of companies and developers referenced Facebook’s news conference to highlight their interest in Facebook Places.

Facebook took great pains to emphasize the privacy settings built into Places. This comes after intense scrutiny from the federal government and users following previous privacy blunders. It remains to be seen whether users will want to broadcast their exact locations to all of their Facebook friends. Unlike some of the smaller social networks, Facebook users often have acquaintances and casual friends in their friends’ list. Sending location updates to a large audience may pose privacy and security risks.