Facebook Places Launches: Geo-location Now Has a Voice
Facebook Places Has Arrived
It feels a bit like Christmas morning. Well, maybe not that joyous, but for geo-location nerds out there – the day has arrived.
Facebook has announced its new geo-location feature, Facebook Places. With Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, BrighKite, Scvngr, and a bevy of other players trying to build engagement for users and brands while following you wherever you go, their adoption rate has been slow, and audience even slower. But now with Facebook’s announcement, the 500 million + users of Facebook have quickly become the biggest geo-location social network out there.
However, let’s back up one minute, first, they are launching U.S. only in this first phase – so it’s only a little under 200 million users who will be able to take part at first.
Secondly, Facebook is doing something great with this feature, they are not trying to squash the competition, they are joining forces, and opening special partnerships with the main geo-location social network stars, such as Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla and Booyah. They will be utilizing the Places API and integrating the feature into their current applications and be working exclusively with Facebook, rather than against them.
Around 5:23 p.m. PST, Facebook made the announcement of Places, as it is was created to share where you are with your friends, see where your friends currently are, and see what places are around you. The product will launch on the iPhone app later this evening, and on all advanced mobile browsers.
Follow-up story coming with more details early tomorrow…But read all about the new Facebook Places here in the meantime.
Will you be using Facebook Places?
