Mobile and Technology

Facebook has unveiled its Facebook Places location-based check-in service this week. The new offering allows users to broadcast their location to the web, track their friends’ movements and see who else has checked-in to a specific location.

Published: 20 Aug 2010

Facebook has unveiled its Facebook Places location-based check-in service this week. The new offering allows users to broadcast their location to the web, track their friends’ movements and see who else has checked-in to a specific location.

The optional service, available initially in the US, will also allow users to tag their friends in posts, flagging their whereabouts as well.

As per the information available, Places allows users to share their location in real-time using an iPhone or a Web page accessed through a mobile browser that supports HTML 5 and geolocation.

The industry believes that this could be the turning point for location-based services (LBS) even though there are several players in the market already with similar offerings. With Facebook now stepping in the game can change dramatically.

Facebook is exposing Places data to developers through its Graph API. It anticipates developers will employ Facebook users’ location data to enhance the social experience of various mobile and Web applications, reported InformationWeek.

The company also anticipates criticism from privacy advocates, as can be seen in its insistence that there’s no privacy risk associated with Places. “It’s important to remember that all access to location information through the Graph API respects a user's privacy controls, which can be viewed and changed on Facebook.com or m.facebook.com,” explained Facebook Places engineer Ben Gertzfield in a blog post for developers.