UK Facebook users going Places

Friday 17 September

Facebook Places has been launched in the UK

Starting today, global social networking giant Facebook is rolling out its Places add-on to UK users, a month after debuting the feature in the US.

What is Places? At its most basic, it’s a geolocation tool, adding a new layer of information to your connection with Facebook: your physical location. As such, it’s designed for smartphone use, and is accessed via a dedicated mobile site, or a standalone iPhone app.

Either way, once you’re up and running you have the ability to automatically make your current location visible to your friends, and potentially with third-party services too. You can also see which of your Places-enabled friends are nearby, and get info on locations around you too.

Given Facebook’s slightly rocky track record when it comes to privacy, the potential sensitivity of others being able to know exactly where you are at any given time has certainly not been lost on critics.

However, even when signed in to Facebook, you actively have to “Check In” for your location to be logged, and unless you’ve chosen for all your info to be available to all your contacts, you can narrow down just who is privy to knowing your location to as small a group as you like.

It’s very much early days for Places, and it will take time for the service to mature. However, its real potential has less to do with individual users than the locations themselves. Knowing that three of your chums are already inside a venue you’ve just arrived at is certainly convenient, but the ability to target all four of you with location-specific advertising or services is the real holy grail here.