We’ve had who, what, when and now we have where. Social networking giant Facebook has launched its location lead feature, known as Facebook Places in the UK today, one month after going live the in US.
The new feature is being rolled out gradually and may not be available to all users just yet.
How it works
Facebook Places works by allowing users to check into venues and tag their friends in the same location, and then their friends either accept or deny – much like the photo application.
The idea behind it is that it allows people without smartphones to be included in location based activities without going into all the complex privacy issues that the social network has previously encountered.
With other players in the location based social networking market with the likes of Foursquare, Gowalla’s Passport, etc. Currently you could say that pole position in the location based social networking is still up for grabs. Bearing this in mind, it is easy to see why Facebook has added this feature; there have been rumblings for a good few months that such a feature was around the corner. With the number of Facebook users growing daily, currently over five hundred million active users, it would be an easy estimation that Facebook Places will take the lead in location based social media.
With Facebook Places being a very small part of Facebook very large picture. It is clear that Facebook is now trying to be an all in one service for social networking, much like what Google has done with search. What this space for Facebook next new feature, who knows what they have in store for us next.
