Facebook Goes Places With Gowalla And Foursquare In Techcrunch.
As the Facebook millions move forward, the company wants to be able to move along with them. In Palo Alto, California, Facebook created Facebook Places. This application will be available by Wednesday.
Now this is only going to be available to certain users, not throughout the world. As some people have found out, they are not yet able to access the application and were not just a little upset. People want their techcrunch stuff right now.
The Facebook Places application will be on Apple’s iPhone. The social network has a design team that created the mobile version on touchscreen smartphones. “Places” is not about broadcasting your location to the world, it’s about sharing where you are with your friends, says Michael Sharon, the product manager for “Places”.
When it is rolled out, the idea is also to use as a tool to give assistance to other users and connect with them if they are in the same vicinity, and if they are traveling to a destination, have the ability to find out what services and happenings are occurring in that locale.
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There are going to be more than a few issues regarding privacy. This seems to come with the territory, as you will be allowing more people than you wish perhaps to know your location. Also, the issues are dealing with stalking, let’s face it, Facebook, they are definitely out there.
A big issue will be with women and childrens protection. Children may opt to use this application, and not realize that it will allow an unwanted person to access their whereabouts. Facebook Places has introduced protection against this, thus parents must be made aware of the application, and do their due diligence.
But with privacy in mind, Facebook will allow users to block “Places” functions as part of a comprehensive set of privacy controls and other safeguards.
“Places” will also create new revenue opportunities for Facebook, as it is a move that has the tech industry buzzing. How easy it will be for a user to check in from their mobile smartphones to let everyone know their location, perhaps a restaurant, a clothing store, department store with sales or specials, the list is endless.
This could bring about the largest revenue right from the start as the locations will flash through the very popular updates. Google and Yelp have shown a great interest because of the large amount of potential profits.
Location services like Twitter, Foursquare, Loopt, and Gowalla, which allow consumers to use their cell phones to keep track of their friends whereabouts, have caught on among technology aficionados. Gowalla and Foursquare have been beside Facebook, saying they will team up with the social network and tailor their own services to work alongside its “Places” feature.
Just to be on the safe side is a huge plus for Facebook Places, look at the damage done to Google Buzz, after it was compromised by faulty privacy issues, now resolved, but severely hurting the companies reputation. Privacy is so very important for so many reasons, it’s a wait-and-see game for the companies to understand how the public will go on this issue.
Tech News | Innovation News | Money News | VentureBeat Booyah builds a new location app for Facebook Places in three weeks. … to interact with friends and share posts in real-time in real-world locations. … Other location-based games, like Gowalla and Booyah, were a bit more vocal …. distribute and keep track of their application programming
Techmeme: Facebook Partnering With Gowalla, Foursquare For Places … New Facebook for iPhone Application with Places Coming Tonight … Liz Gannes / GigaOM: Facebook Launches Places With Support of Foursquare and Gowalla … Google and Verizon Tablet Shipping for Holiday Shopping Season …. Skype’s Chief Development Officer Leaves Amid TechCrunch Comment Fiasco …
Facebook Is Testing Using Foursquare And Gowalla Check-Ins For Its … What Foursquare and Gowalla (the two location apps specifically … the easiest and most fun way to share location with friends, …. By the way, when are you adding the capability to check-in to foursquare right from Techcrunch ? … in place in SouthEastAsia) that continuously track your location …
Facebook Places Goes Live On The iPhone. Check-In While It’s Hot … At Facebook’s Places event earlier tonight, they noted that their iPhone app would be updated tonight with the new check-in functionality.
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