Facebook Places Location Based Service: Did You 'Check In' with Your Friends?

Facebook has announced the release of their new 'Places' Location Baased Service for mobile devices. Facebook places allows friends on geolocation enabled mobile devices (phones, computers) to 'check in' with each other when they reach a destination.

For instance, if you're at a local salad & juice bar, checking in will allow your friends to see you're present. Facebook Places privacy control let's you set who sees it and for how long.

Perhaps one of the neatest features of Facebook Places is the 'People Here Now' section. When you arrive at a destination, 'People Here Now' shows which of your Facebook friends are there (if they have 'checked in'). So not only can you talk to real world friends, you can meet your other Facebook contacts for the first time. This too, can be controlled with the privacy control settings.

But Facebook's new location based service is not without substantial controversy. The biggest sticking point is, of course, privacy. While location based service may be a natural extension to Facebook users' every day activity (how often do we tell each other what we're doing, where we're at?), it does leave a highly detailed activity log of our activities. This isn't just bad for burglars, but instead could have all manner of repercussions (employment, relationships, parents, cybercrime, etc).

Another big issue is advertising. Facebook isn't exactly shy when it comes to using behavior targeting advertising. And while they've known your location for some time (based on your IP), this will add to the pool of information advertisers can use to target you with.

Some have gone so far as to post instructions for disabling Facebook Places entirely. Lifehacker had this to say in their instructions for turning it off: "Facebook—yet again—has made the assumption that you want to take part in all of their privacy-eroding new features..."

Regardless where you stand on the issue, location based services on social networks are here to stay. Facebook is not the only player in town. Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla, Booyah, and the upcoming 'Google Me' social networks will also have these features in some form.

Read More at the Facebook Blog....