Facebook launches Places, location check-in, discovery
Facebook is currently holding a media event (it’s still going on), but we wanted to update you since it’s pretty interesting and has to do with mobile devices — they’re launching that much-rumored Foursquare-competing product, called Places. It is to help you with three things: help you see where you are, help you see who’s around you, and help you see what’s going on nearby (discovery). You can tag friends with you while checking in to locations, and Places will automatically check you in and create a news feed story showing where you are. Facebook also has opened up API access to Places and Gowalla is one of the first partners on stage demonstrating how they are going to make sure of Places. Foursquare just got up on stage, too — Facebook Places is the new hotness. Yelp just took the stage after Foursquare, we’re pretty impressed. What do you guys think?
Facebook Places will be available starting tonight in a new iPhone application update, and in Facebook’s mobile touch website for advanced mobile devices.
Jonathan S. Geller
Jonathan Geller is the founder of Boy Genius Report, now known as BGR. What began as a column on popular gadget blog Engadget quickly grew into one of the site’s biggest draws, and Jonathan soon detached the wildly popular column to create what has since become the biggest mobile news destination in the world.
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