Facebook Places Service Adds Location-Based Services
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today
announced the company's latest creation, a foray into the world of
location-based services called Facebook Places.
This is going to be a really fun and
interesting summer," said Zuckerberg at the start of the evening.
"We've got a lot of new products coming out." The first of these new
products--Places--is a smartphone-based service that takes on much of
the functionality provided by existing services such as FourSquare and
Yelp.
Facebook Places is designed to do three main things:
- Help people share where they are in a social way. - See which friends are nearby. - Discover nearby places and new places through friends' profiles.
Michael Sharon, Facebook product manager for Places, demonstrated the
service's capabilities, most of which appear functionally identical to
the features already popularized by FourSquare. Through an updated
version of the iPhone app or by browsing to touch.facebook.com on a
mobile browser, users will find a main menu that shows nearby friends
and offers a list of nearby places to check into.He also wrote about the
Places feature in the Facebook blog.
Choose a place from the
list and tap the "check in" button to check in, or tap the plus symbol
to add a new place, and users will see a security notice explaining
that they're about to share their location. The service also includes
the ability to tag friends who are in the same location and check them
in at the same time because, as Sharon explained, not everyone has a
smartphone that supports Places yet. Privacy Controls
In
light of recent concerns over Facebook user privacy, the company made a
point of highlighting Places' security features. By default, check-ins
are visible to friends only, though this setting is customizable to
allow broader sharing or to restrict it down to just a few specific
people.
Users will only be able to tag people who are on their
friends lists, and then only when they first check into a place. This
ostensibly limits the chances of mischief with the service,
particularly because the only way to check a friend into a potentially
embarrassing location will be to check oneself in as well.
Users will have the ability to remove themselves from any tag, just as
with the existing photo sharing service. Additionally, users can choose
to opt out of letting others tag them in Places.
Places will
also include a reporting feature that will allow users to report
location listings that are erroneous, offensive, or out of date.
As of Thursday, Facebook will launch a read API that lets people read
check-ins and find out more about a place. A write API and a search API
are currently in beta in beta testing and will be rolled out to
developers soon. Facebook Partners
When Sharon finished his
overview of the service, he invited representatives from several
popular location-based services to the stage to describe their
companies' new features that integrate with Facebook Places.
Scott Raymond, CEO of Gowalla; Holger Luedorf, FourSquare VP of mobile
& partnerships; Eric Singley, director of mobile products at Yelp;
and Keith Lee, CEO of Booyah stepped up to the podium to talk about how
they perceive the new service. Unsurprisingly, all four sounded bullish
on Places, though at times the tone seemed a bit desperate.
Holger Luedorf of FourSquare used his time at the podium to answer the
question on everybody's mind: "This basically validates that we're onto
something and that we're adding value," said Lueforf, focusing on the
positive. "We're looking forward to working with the Facebook team."
Of course, it remains to be seen whether users will still gravitate to
third-party services and apps like those provided by FourSquare and
Yelp once they can do most of the same things without leaving their
primary social networking app.
In summing up the announcement,
Facebook VP of Product Chris Cox told a story of the future. He
envisioned a time when a user will be sitting at a restaurant and their
mobile device will begin to glow. The device will tell them which of
their friends have eaten at this restaurant before, and what they
ordered. It will share pictures of their friends visiting this place,
and the good times they had there.
He envisioned a moment when a
person visits San Francisco's Ocean Beach, and their mobile device
begins to glow (apparently mobile devices of the future will do a lot
of glowing), and it will tell them that this was the spot where their
parents shared their first kiss. It will show them pictures of that
kiss, and it will share the things their friends had to say about those
pictures.
It's a heartwarming vision, however distant.
Meanwhile, back in reality, this may prove to be the night FourSquare,
Yelp, and Facebook shared the location-based stage for the last time.