Social networking site Facebook yesterday introduced its long-awaited Places service. The new Facebook app allows users to “check in” on Facebook and broadcast their location to their friends.
Facebook users will be able to use smartphones to check in at retail outlets, restaurants, bars, museums and galleries, immediately alerting their Facebook friends to their whereabouts. They will then be able to view the location of any friends nearby and any other users who have made their location publicly available.
Check-ins will be visible in a user’s status update, and they will be able to tag accompanying friends to their location.
Once checked in, Places will suggest other locations in the vicinity users may be interested in visiting based on their profile.
Privacy concerns are one of the main issues facing the new service. Michael Sharon, product manager for Places said it would give users the power to decide with whom they share their check-ins. He stressed that Places is not a service that broadcasts your location at all times: “It lets you find friends that are nearby and help you discover nearby places.”
In the long term, Places will allow Facebook to carve out a large proportion of the local and small business advertising market – one in whic Google is not already the dominant force.
Google has recently increased its own efforts to gain a share of small business advertising with services like Google Local, which are meant to help bring more small businesses online and help users find them quickly.
Location-based marketing will also give e-commerce companies the ability to see how their customers behave and online marketers the chance influence users’ buying decisions with time and location-specific ads.
