Here's an example of what it will look like in your Facebook news feed.
(If you have a spare couple of hours you can view a replay of the product launch here.)
You may have seen this type of update coming through in your Facebook news feeds already via location-based apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, which both allow users to create and check in to locations and then share it with friends. Over the past year I've seen location based apps grow in popularity, but the fact that facebook is getting on board in such a huge capacity is possibly revealing just how big of a trend it is.
In the official guide sent through from facebook today, the slogan for Facebook Places was "Who. What. When. And now where". This is going to be the main point of difference from the existing Facebook services. It signals a shift in ideals for how we use Facebook. No longer will our status updates be about "what am I doing", but "what am I doing and where am I doing it". And with this comes a whole new opportunity for conversation and dispersion of our social information, not to mention the opportunities it presents for highly location specific marketing.
One of the most poignant elements that came out of the speeches at today's launch was the idea that, in 20 years time one of my kids could be checking in to a restaurant and receive an alert on their phone that my (future) wife and I had our first date there. They'll be able to see when we checked in, what we said about it and the conversation that followed between our friends. If I'm honest it kind of freaked me out, but it got the Traffika office thinking about the potential of this application, and the data gathering capabilities it has opened up for facebook and its advertisers. It has certainly opened up a window of opportunities for the social media platform which, as always, is totally dependent on user uptake.
At the moment the applications isn't yet available in Australia, but stay tuned!
Do you think you will use Facebook Places? If so, how?
Chris is a specialist in Social Media Marketing at Traffika. Follow him on Twitter @chrispahor.
