Facebook on Wednesday launched its new location-sharing feature called Places. Similar to other location-based services such as Gowalla and MyTown, it allows you to signal your presence at a bar, restaurant, arena, or other location via Facebook. The social network's focus appears to be on simply sharing your location with your friends as opposed to including gaming elements or promotional check-in incentives that you find with other location services such as Foursquare
Places promises to be an interesting addition to Facebook, and could increase the popularity of location sharing in general. But before you start checking in to every restaurant, movie theater, and bar you visit, here's what you need to know.
Places basics
At launch, Places will be available to U.S. users only. You can check into a location in two ways: through the Facebook iPhone application or by pointing your mobile browser to touch.facebook.com. The browser-based version of Places will work only if your device supports HTML5 and geolocation.
Just tap the Places icon and you'll see a list of nearby Places. Tap on your location from the list, and you can check in, tag any friends who are with you, and add a status update. When you tag a friend, you will be checking them in if they allow third party check-ins. If your friend doesn't allow third party check-ins, then tagging them will be just like tagging them in a status update. No actual check-in will happen.
You can only check in people who are on your Facebook friends list, and only when you first check into a location yourself. You can see who else is at your location under the "People Here Now" section for that place.
Facebook says all Places check-ins are visible only to friends by default unless your master privacy control is set to "Everyone."
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