Facebook Places went live on Wednesday evening, allowing Facebook users to share their location with their friends, including the ability to comment about the place and tag their friends.
Places is a new Facebook feature that brings geo-tagging and location services to Facebook. Industry analysts expected Facebook to release the feature sooner or later, as it is a popular service offered by other social networking sites such as Foursquare and Twitter.
The new Facebook Places feature can be accessed using either the Facebook for iPhone application, or using any smartphone or web browser that has support for HTML5 and geo-location. The best place to access Facebook Places is at touch.facebook.com, Facebook’s page for touch-sensitive devices and smartphones—it works for non-touch smartphones as well.
It is important to note that places does request access to the user’s current location. Most browsers and smartphones warn the user and request him or her to press a button before approving the sending of location data back to Facebook.
Facebook says that names for most “places” are automatically listed in the application already, and if the location name is not present, users can search for it or add it. Once the location is found or added, users can then “check in” and tag their friends as also being present.
Facebook says that the Places feature also allows users of the popular social networking site to find other friends who are in close range.
“In the ‘People Here Now’ section, you can see others who are checked in with you at that place. This section is visible for a limited amount of time and only to people who are checked in there,” Facebook said about the feature in its official blog post.
The release information also outlined privacy settings for the Places application in great detail.
“With Places, you are in control of what you share and the people you share with. You choose whether or not to share your location when you check in at a place. When you check in, you can tag friends who are with you but only if their settings allow it,” says the official Facebook blog post. It goes on to list the highly granular privacy settings that the user can specify for tagging or checking in, including allowing other Facebook applications to access the data.
The feature is currently available only in certain regions of the United States, but Facebook deliver it more broadly in the future.
“Facebook immediately opened up location data to applications and Connect sites. This means that your friends’ apps may be able to access information about your most recent check-in by default as soon as you start using Places,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California said, criticizing the default privacy settings on the Facebook Places release.
“Even if you’ve already gone through your settings to limit the info that apps can access, you should do it again—you may find that you’ve been defaulted into sharing your location info with apps.”
One user with the last name “Sciarra” commented on Facebook’s official post about the Places feature, saying, “I have to say that this is the worst idea EVER! This new ”Places“ is very dangerous. To allow people to become victims of stalking should be a crime. Facebook is helping people stalk and harass other people.”
Some analysts believe that Facebook delayed enabling this feature precisely because of privacy concerns, even though it had wanted to compete in this space and ward off the increasing popularity of other popular social location applications such as Foursquare.
Places is a new Facebook feature that brings geo-tagging and location services to Facebook. Industry analysts expected Facebook to release the feature sooner or later, as it is a popular service offered by other social networking sites such as Foursquare and Twitter.
The new Facebook Places feature can be accessed using either the Facebook for iPhone application, or using any smartphone or web browser that has support for HTML5 and geo-location. The best place to access Facebook Places is at touch.facebook.com, Facebook’s page for touch-sensitive devices and smartphones—it works for non-touch smartphones as well.
It is important to note that places does request access to the user’s current location. Most browsers and smartphones warn the user and request him or her to press a button before approving the sending of location data back to Facebook.
Facebook says that names for most “places” are automatically listed in the application already, and if the location name is not present, users can search for it or add it. Once the location is found or added, users can then “check in” and tag their friends as also being present.
Facebook says that the Places feature also allows users of the popular social networking site to find other friends who are in close range.
“In the ‘People Here Now’ section, you can see others who are checked in with you at that place. This section is visible for a limited amount of time and only to people who are checked in there,” Facebook said about the feature in its official blog post.
The release information also outlined privacy settings for the Places application in great detail.
“With Places, you are in control of what you share and the people you share with. You choose whether or not to share your location when you check in at a place. When you check in, you can tag friends who are with you but only if their settings allow it,” says the official Facebook blog post. It goes on to list the highly granular privacy settings that the user can specify for tagging or checking in, including allowing other Facebook applications to access the data.
The feature is currently available only in certain regions of the United States, but Facebook deliver it more broadly in the future.
Privacy Concerns
As with any feature that Facebook launches, there are pundits who are tearing apart the new feature for its lack of privacy guarantees.“Facebook immediately opened up location data to applications and Connect sites. This means that your friends’ apps may be able to access information about your most recent check-in by default as soon as you start using Places,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California said, criticizing the default privacy settings on the Facebook Places release.
“Even if you’ve already gone through your settings to limit the info that apps can access, you should do it again—you may find that you’ve been defaulted into sharing your location info with apps.”
One user with the last name “Sciarra” commented on Facebook’s official post about the Places feature, saying, “I have to say that this is the worst idea EVER! This new ”Places“ is very dangerous. To allow people to become victims of stalking should be a crime. Facebook is helping people stalk and harass other people.”
Some analysts believe that Facebook delayed enabling this feature precisely because of privacy concerns, even though it had wanted to compete in this space and ward off the increasing popularity of other popular social location applications such as Foursquare.
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