We had been hearing about the Facebook event and the coming of Places to the social network. The event is live at the moment and you can watch it right here.
The event started off late and it has already got over 5,000 people watching. The announcements are pretty much and in all honesty they look appealing. Some of the key announcement and products to come:
Facebook Places – An optional location service for its 500 million users. This lets you share the information on places you visit with your friends. It has maps, comments and the Like feature.
Though there is already a Facebook App, but the new one will be launched at touch.facebook.com, this is for all touch devices like your iPhone, iPad, Android devices etc. We will also be seeing a new iPhone App tonight.
Check-in and Tagging – The social network really wants you and your circle of friends to remain connected. The tagging feature is limited to your friends only and removes the spamming factor by letting you tag every one you can think of.
People Here Now – This feature lets you see which one of your friend or others have already checked in at the same place. This feature is limited only to a particular time period and only if someone has also checked in. This would help you meet people who share similar interests like you. In case you aren’t comfortable with this feature you can uncheck the include me in ‘People Here Now’ box in the privacy settings.
Privacy – This has been a major issue with Facebook in the recent past. Gladly enough the social network has appropriately addressed each of those. Though I would reserve a judgment until it has been tested and complains roll out.
Partners – The social network has swallowed each of its competitors to be; Gowalla, Yelp, Foursquare in the location arena have been stripped off competition by turning them into Partners.
The last bit is smart, we are well aware that each of these services is popular and has a lot of users. Facebook on the other hand already has over 500 million users and counting, giving it a large userbase to leverage. The integration of all the existing location services is a clever move from Mark Zuckerberg and company, chopping off competition right at the beginning.
The Facebook Places will currently be available for the US only.
By the way, isn’t this check-in bit and places of similar interest somewhat similar to what Face2Face does as well?
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