Facebook Places was announced this week and slowly, it is being distributed to US accounts. After that, it will be distributed internationally.
In the meantime, foursquare has been the dominant social media platform for location-based social networking with 2 million users over its counterparts Gowalla and Brightkite. With Facebook’s entry into the location-based social networking space, it will make location-based social networking a serious part of our social networking lives. With over 500 million users and 20% already accessing Facebook via a mobile device, we’re going to see this form of social networking go mainstream. Yahoo! entered the game in May 2010 with the acquisition of Koprol. So, let’s take a short look at the upcoming Facebook Places.
To learn more about Facebook Places, visit this page by going to http://www.facebook.com/places/
To set your privacy settings, visit this location: http://www.facebook.com/places/#!/settings/?tab=privacy
Visit this location to access Facebook’s FAQ’s on Places:
http://www.facebook.com/places/#!/help/?topic=places
This is the Facebook Privacy Settings page so be sure you have CUSTOM settings checked and then click CUSTOMIZE SETTINGS.
Once you get to the CUSTOMIZE SETTINGS page, find these two highlighted areas. To limit access completely, you can set it to the example shown so that only you can view your own Check-ins and nobody else can tag your location. This completely secures access to your Facebook Places.
Personally, I see Facebook Places as the next step to making our world a true global village again. And, I personally hope to use location-based social networking to tell my loved ones, family and friends where I am or where I have been so we can stay connected around the globe wherever we may be. And, of course, there will be many business applications for geographically-based businesses and professions.
The introduction of Facebook Places is very exciting for location-based social networking.
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