Yesterday, Facebook announced the release of Facebook Places, a strikingly similar application to that of Foursquare (They even use the same lingo!). Facebook places allows you to share your current location with your friends, and the rest of those people you have added on your Facebook account to look “cooler as ekke”. Once you share your location, you can then add a comment along with it to let your friends know what you think of the place you are visiting.
“Places is a Facebook feature that allows you to see where your friends are and share your location in the real world. When you use Places, you’ll be able to see if any of your friends are currently checked in nearby and connect with them easily. You can check into nearby Places to tell your friends where you are, tag your friends in the Places you visit, and view comments your friends have made about the Places you visit. Use Places to experience connecting with people on Facebook in a completely new way.”
Facebook Places makes use of W3 geolocation functionality thats already built into your iPhone or Blackberry and lets Facebook know where you at any time (and you thought Facebook facial recognition was scary). This opens up a multitude of possibilities both good and bad.
The good.
As I mentioned in one of my posts a couple of days ago, the marketing potential of an application such as this is immense. Your business can run specials that only apply to users that “check in” to your store using Facebook Places. These specials have more of a chance of becoming viral than your average Facebook fan page update. If marketing is not your style, its still cool to know where your friends are at.
The bad.
As with any technology that is released in today’s times, there are those people (if I can call them that) that make use of it for ulterior motives. If you havent done so already, enforcing your own and your family’s correct privacy settings should now be top of your list of things to do. Not sure on how to set up your privacy settings correctly, check this article.
The “unfortunate”.
Facebook Places has only been launched in the United States for now. When it will become available in South Africa is anyones guess but from previous experience with Facebook, it could be in the next few weeks.
Nick is an Online Marketing Professional for Talooma and the co-owner, founder and creator of myScoop, the local blog aggregator. Nick is extremely innovative and is always on the lookout for new and exciting ideas for online tools and applications. When he finds time, he occasionally writes articles about online marketing, latest technological trends and other interesting developments.
Tags: facebook, facebook places, foursquare, geolocation, w3 geolocation
This seems more scary than “cool.” I’m sure phoedophiles and rapists are keen on it though … Eish, there should be an 18 age restriction to use this app, not that this would help anyway
Hi Nick,
A really well written article. I think a lot of people enter into social media a little too blindly and forget that there are people out there who immediately take advantage of the technological advances and the unsuspecting.
It is really cool how new doors are unlocked each day tough!
Thanks guys. Another thing which I think is happening here is that Facebook is trying to inject as much “fun” and “new” functionality into their platform before the launch of Google Me. It would be interesting to see what new functionality Google brings to the table with regards to socializing and sharing online.
Nice article.
All my friends all over the world seem to use Facebook places. Here in south Africa it still isn’t available. Anyone have an idea when it will be launched in SA?