Facebook is currently the world’s most popular social networking site and the home of over 500 million users worldwide. Apart from accessing the site from their computers, users can now use their mobile phones as well to keep in touch with friends and have access to Facebook from just about anywhere. While some users would rather stick around Facebook and chat with their friends all day long, they’ll still have to spend some time away from their computers for a number of hours each day. This is also why most social networking sites have gone mobile these days. Users can then easily access the services while on the go, through their mobile phones.
Attempting to further gain users and bring something new to existing users, Facebook has recently announced that it will include a new feature which allows US members to share their whereabouts with friends with the help of their mobile devices.
The service, called Facebook Places finally allows Facebook users to take advantage of ‘location-based’ services on smartphones which are equipped with satellite position tracking capabilities.
“Starting today, you can immediately tell people about that favorite spot with Facebook Places,” said Places product manager Michael Eyal Sharon.”You can share where you are and the friends you’re with in real time from your mobile device.”
So from now on, while visiting a restaurant, museum or bar, Facebook members will be able ‘check in’ to let their friends know, instantly, where they are and with whom. iPhone users will get an application for the service, whereas owners of other smartphones will be able to access the service with their help of web browser software that supports geo-location and HTML5 by visiting the Places website which is touch.facebook.com.
“If you are not in the US you can still see if friends are using it here but you will not be able to check-in,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced. While this feature is currently 
only available to US users, the company has plans to extend the feature to all smartphones and worldwide. Places is already available as an update for Facebook’s application for the iPhone, while applications for Blackberry, Android or other handsets should come out in the next few months.
Now, the first thing that comes to mind regarding this application is lack of privacy. Your handset will instantly announce your Facebook friends of your whereabouts but you may not want to let them know where you are or with whom. Probably anticipating such concerns, the Facebook team also announced that privacy will be respected and users will be able to control how location information is shared. So if you don’t want to share this type of information, you won’t have to.
Facebook has also thought about developers and has made certain tools available for companies who are interested in creating applications based on Facebook’s new feature. Ben Gertzfield, a Facebook engineer also mentioned that application makers would have to be granted permission by the users before any data regarding their whereabouts was shared.
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