Facebook Places

Author: Lukas Kubina

With Facebook Places you can now leave your exact position instead of your emotional status on the social network. Experts agree that the link between social networks and location-based services is definetely the next big thing. Inofficially, 2010 is already labelled the „Year of Location". Especially as location-based services such as Foursquare, Gowalla and now Facebook Places are a fantastic tool to penetrate the user in order to target advertisement with unseen accuracy.

Farhad Manjoo, the tech columnist of the online magazine Slate explains that Facebook's system goes one step further than Foursquare and other check-in sites. When you check yourself in to a location, Facebook also gives you the option of checking in other people. There are two obvious problems with letting people check in their friends. The minor one is fake tagging, what if someone tags you as being someplace you're not? The bigger problem with Facebook Places concerns the opposite situation - that you really were at some place where your friends, family or boss might not want you to be. The horror vision of the erasion of the last lies circulates in the blogosphere.
Due to this, Gawker's Adrian Chen suggests that the first thing Facebook members should do is to turn it off.
Please find an on stage interview with Dennis Crowley (Foursquare) at DLD 2010 here and watch how Facebook's Vice President of Engineering MIke Schroepfer outlines the companies strategy on the panel "Data & Identity" at DLD 2010 below:

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