It’s official! Tomorrow Facebook is launching Facebook “Places” – a geo-location service that will allow users to broadcast their location, see where their friends are, and search places.
Here are the snippets from tonight’s livecast from Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto:
- Mark Zuckerberg pointed out that technology does not need to estrange us from one another. There is a “third place” that helps create a relationship between public space and community (first two are home and workplace). Places is not about broadcasting your location to the world, it’s about sharing where you are with friends.
- Facebook is rolling it out gradually, first in US; the features will be visible to everyone, but ability to check in will be available in US only
- Three key components: Help you share where you are, help you find where your friends are, and discover new places around you..
- Facebook is launching Places on touch.facebook.com and in a brand new iPhone app being released later tonight. A new icon will appear on the home sreen. Open it and it will show you a list of friends, including those who are nearby (looks a lot like Foursquare). As soon as you check in you’ll see a list of places around you. You can search for nearby locations. If they aren’t there, you can hit the ‘+’ symbol to add a place. To add a place you type in a name and description. Tap Checkin button. You’ll see a preview of the story at the top, with a notice of what will happen (and a link to find out what’s going on). Once you agree, creates a new story on the Place page.
- Privacy: Default check-in to be visible to friends only. You can dial it down and restrict to a few specific people. Can remove any check-in from your phone or on the web. If you create a place, you can delete it as well; you’ll have a full control over a place and its privacy settings.
- Tagging: You can only tag your friends while you are checking in. You’re notified whenever you’re tagged. You can always remove any tag. You can opt out of having friends tag you at all. Can just hit ‘Disabled’
- “Is this your business?” is a feature of the Places product. You can claim a business page.
- No updates planned to Facebook’s T&C based on this announcement
- Plans for blackberry and android are in place, no timeline though; touch.facebook.com works on android though
- Screenshots below are the courtesy of TechCrunch
Also, check out official blog post by Facebook: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=418175202130
