Facebook Allows Users to Suggest Edits to Places Pages. Facebook users will now see a “Suggest Edits” link in the top right of the info tab for Places pages. When clicked, it reveals a content editor allowing them to add and edit information such as the website or email address of a business. The edits do not immediately go live. Instead, Facebook tells us it implements edits to unclaimed Places after review when appropriate, and is working on a system for presenting potential edits to the admins of claimed Places. The ability to suggest edits will help Places stay up to date over time and give users the sense that they have a stake in local businesses.
Facebook launched its location service Places in August, allowing users to create new Places pages for locations they want to check in to. Facebook seeded its directory of Places using data from Localeze, which also augments local business directories for Google and Twitter. Places pages have great potential to be repositories of user-generated content about locations. Discontent Grows With Facebook Places’ Ability To Tag Without Users’ Express Permission.
There’s a fun and charming story on Advertising Age about a woman and her friends having a fun and charming dinner together. All is well and good until Facebook Places, the new location-based service that promises to revolutionize something or other, spoils the fun. It seems that people don’t exactly want their exact location broadcast to all of their Facebook friends, especially without their express permission. Oh, no: it’s a moral conundrum (conundrum). What happened here was that, while eating at a restaurant, the author checked into via Facebook Places. Then she tagged the post with all of the people in her party. Now, all of these people’s friends will have seen that they were at a certain place at a certain time. Never mind the fact the such information, to a random friend on a hopelessly large friend list, is pretty much useless: what good does it do me to know that my friend at pizza at 9:30pm somewhere in Queens?
So let’s put aside the value of the information. And so on. Did Mark Zuckerberg leave a Facebook Places trail in London? At the moment Facebook Places is only available in the United States. Or to put that another way, it’s only available to IP addresses associated with the United States. But clearly Facebook has been working on it for several months, and that also means that they have probably been tentatively testing it in other parts of the world, although there’s not a lot of information to go on right now.
But, handily, Mark Zuckerberg travels a lot and has probably been testing Places out himself. Evidence to that affect has emerged today via a developer in London. Arun Stephens has uncovered what looks, at least to our eyes, like a Facebook Places footprint which Zuckerberg and his entourage left behind on their recent visit to the FB hack day and Facebook Developer Garage in London. His findings make interesting reading. Stephens says he’s recently been working out of the London tech/coworking spot TechHub [Facebook Place] and found four Places in the area. Facebook Kept Thousands Of Check-Ins On Lockdown For Months. Impressive. Confirmed Hot Potato: Yup, Facebook Bought ‘Em, Will Soon Shut Them Down.
Stalkers. Creeps. Weirdos. Terror. Welcome To Location, Facebook. The countdown is officially on for the big Facebook location backlash. How long will it be? One week? Two weeks? We all know it’s coming, it’s just a matter of when. The ACLU wasted little time yesterday trying to start such a backlash (their post on the matter came what, a whole 30 seconds after the press conference ended?). Today, the EFF followed up the ACLU’s post by citing things like pleaserobme.com as an illustration of how sensitive location information can be. My point is that plenty of people right now are out there on the hunt for a way to show that Facebook Places is the devil. I thought Facebook’s presentation (and video) about Places yesterday was great because it focused on the positive. But clearly they wanted to be careful. But after only one day of using Places I’m seeing the potential here.
To some people, that’s creepy (it has been a feature on Foursquare for a while and that’s basically what Loopt was for a while). That’s the power of Facebook’s social graph. The Confusing Stages Of Opting Into Facebook Places. Earlier today we had a bit of a fire-drill at TechCrunch Headquarters. As I checked into TCHQ on Facebook Places, I also tagged a few of my coworkers, fully expecting their checkins to be delayed until they actually opted into the feature for the first time (unlike some of Facebook’s past controversial feature launches, you have to Opt-In before you can be tagged in Places). Except, as we quickly discovered, you really don’t have to opt in before you can be tagged. As soon as I checked in on Places, Facebook published News Feed items to my friends indicating that I’d checked in with my coworkers — even the coworkers who hadn’t yet opted into Places.
My coworker received an email asking him to confirm the tag, but he had never clicked it. And yet, many of his friends were being notified that he’d just checked into Techcrunch HQ with me. Turns out, there are three different stages of opting into the service. Option one: You’ve explicitly opted into allowing people to tag you into 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. Facebook is wasting no time encouraging advertisers to start registering their businesses. Places creates a presence for your business’s physical store locations- encouraging your customers to share that they’ve visited your business by “checking in” to your Place.
Of course, many advertisers and businesses may be confused about the need for both a Page and a Place. Of course, the race to create a widespread directory of places is already full of competitors. Facebook’s Apple-Like Places Promo [Video] Yesterday during their Places event, Facebook showed a video highlighting the thoughts of the team of developers who actually built the functionality.
It’s slick as hell — very nicely done. In fact, we weren’t the only ones who initially thought that it looked like an Apple video. No it’s not quite the FaceTime Don Draper-esque commercial, but it’s much better than a lot of the very bland videos that most other companies put out there to talk about their products. Help Centre. Facebook Places Vs. The Location-Based World.
20% Of Foursquare Users Are Pushing Their Check-Ins To Facebook (TCTV) The Paranoid Can Relax, Facebook Dials Up Privacy With Places. Updated: After careful consideration, I’m retracting my B and replacing it with a C-, penalizing Facebook for superfluous complexity and a lack of transparency. I wrote the original article on Wednesday evening, after attending the press event, carefully reading the company’s blog post, comparing notes and talking to several Facebook representatives. While the following information is correct, Facebook did not fully explain that there are three different stages to “opting-in.” We talked to Facebook on the phone today, expressed our concern, and they acknowledged that there was a lack of clarity. Facebook is currently making a demo video to properly address these privacy issues. In the meantime, Jason Kincaid has delivered a must-read explanation of these three opt-in stages here. The following is my original post: Less than one hour after Facebook struck the ceremonial gong, signaling the official birth of Places, the ACLU of Northern California was ready to cry foul play.
Spotted: Facebook Location In Action. Meet Facebook Places! We’re sitting here in the waiting room at Facebook waiting for the supposed location event to start. Facebook won’t say officially what the event is about, but it seems like everyone knows. And now we know for sure. Earlier, we found code evidence of the new Facebook Places area. Now we’ve found the feature itself. Welcome to Facebook Places. The following screenshots are from the touch version of Facebook’s website.
The same place we originally found the location code months ago. Update: And like that — it’s gone. Update 2: It came back for a second. More on Facebook Places: Facebook’s Awesome Dark Knight-Esque Live Check-In Display. 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. pic of zuck CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken the stage. Whenever we build something new we want to show to a bunch of people, we have a tradition of launch nights. The idea is to have everyone from the community come together, including people who want to write about, analyze, where we talk about the new things we’re doing.
“This will be a fun and interesting summer, we have a lot of new products coming out.” We knew it was ready to go. Showing video of the feature. Facebook Places Goes Live On The iPhone. Check-In While It’s Hot (If You Can) 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.
Friend check-ins are sorted by those friends who are nearby and those who are elsewhere. One thing that’s oddly tricky is actually checking-in yourself. Still, on the touch.facebook.com version of the site the functionality is working and seems much more obvious. You’ll also notice that Facebook has changed the Inbox icon on their new app. Update 3: And now version 3.2.1 is out with bug fixes. Facebook Partnering With Gowalla And Foursquare For 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 Has Been Working On This Location Feature For 8 Months. Who, What, When, and Now...Where.