Facebook Places
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
At Facebook’s Places event earlier tonight, they noted that their iPhone app would be updated tonight with the new check-in functionality. Sure enough, here it is. Though the App Store update alert hasn’t kicked in yet, if you go to the actual page and redownload it, it should be the latest version (version 3.2). As you can see, the new Places area is front and center in the app. Clicking on it brings up a list of your friends who have recently checked in to various places. Clicking on those friends shows more details about the place they are at.
Facebook Places Goes Live On The iPhone. Check-In While It’s Hot (If You Can)
Live From Facebook’s Location Event (Video Stream)
We’re at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, where the social network is finally unveiling its much-anticipated location feature, which will be called Places . We’ve already published the first screenshots of the new feature, but we’re about to get the full rundown on how it works and who Facebook is partnering with. The company has invited dozens of press to the event (it even shuttled some of them down from San Francisco), and it’s clear that it’s treating this as a very big deal. I’m liveblogging my notes from the event below.
Facebook Has Been Working On This Location Feature For 8 Months
Today at an event at their headquarters in Palo Alto, CA, Facebook unveiled their new Places product — their location/check-in solution. Obviously, their entry in this space has been rumored for a long time — a very long time. But during the Q&A session, someone asked how long Facebook has actually been working on this Places product. Since December, one of the engineers in charge of the product replied. But he also revealed that there have been other “skunkworks” projects internally at Facebook surrounding location long before that. The past 8 months have just been specifically focused on what is now called Places.Facebook Wants Advertisers To Help Build Out Its Directory of Places
As we heard tonight, Facebook has officially launched Places, the social network’s location-based platform. We know what Places will mean for Facebook users. Users will be able to check-in to Places (created by both people and businesses) via the web or through mobile apps. And the feature has an API so partners like Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and Booyah can allow their users to check-in to Facebook’s places. But what does this mean for businesses? Interestingly, Facebook seems to actively be targeting advertisers on the network.
With Facebook’s announcement of a check-in feature dubbed Facebook Places , we’re all wondering how it will affect location-based services like Foursquare . So I went ahead and asked founder and chief executive Dennis Crowley. While Foursquare had a presence at the Facebook announcement, it wasn’t very clear what exactly the two companies would be doing together . Other location-based games, like Gowalla and Booyah, were a bit more vocal claiming integrations with Facebook.
Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley: Still deciding on Facebook Places
Today at an event in Palo Alto, CA, Facebook unveiled its new Places product — essentially their check-in utility . Obviously, there has been a lot of talk about what this means for the current players like Foursquare and Gowalla. Well, Facebook is partnering with both of those guys. We hinted at this possibility a couple days ago . Representatives from both Gowalla and Foursquare were invited to take the stage at the event to talk about how they plan to leverage Facebook’s new Places API. Both will allow you to check-in and publish the data to your Facebook feed.
Facebook Partnering With Gowalla And Foursquare For Places
Facebook Places Plays Nice with Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla and Booyah
<img src="http://s.radar.oreilly.com/201008181814.jpg" height="250" border="0" style="float: right;margin: 0 0 12px 12px" alt="fb places iphone screen" /> Facebook just launched Places for the United States. In short, it is a location check-in platform. They launched with four partners (Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and Booyah) all of whom are federating check-ins in some way. The Places API is currently read-only, while the Write & Search API are in closed beta. Facebook Places was created with three goals: