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Facebook Launches Location Based Product

Posted by samzenpus on from the friends-should-already-know-where-you-are dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "Facebook officially launched its 'Places' location-based product, backed by seeming rivals Foursquare and Gowalla. Facebook had been expected to announce a location service ever since it announced the press conference earlier this week. The Places service officially goes live August 19, although an iPhone app will go live on the August 18. According to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Places has been in development for several months. It had three goals, he said: helping share where you are in a nice and social way, to see who's around you, and just discover new and cool places to visit in the future."

1 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Iphone and Windows? by mdwh2 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Iphone first, followed by Android and then Windows. Yet Another Company writing catering first only for 3% of the mobile phone owning population, followed up with two of the other smaller platforms, whilst ignoring the market leaders of Symbian (worldwide) and RIM (in the US).

    Android is certainly a platform that should be written for, as it's the fastest growing right now, and second most popular in the US. But I fail to understanding putting the Iphone first, or supporting Iphone and Windows, whilst forgetting the two major platforms. All I can think of is that the Iphone and Windows have problem using the touch.facebook.com site with a web browser, so need to have a special "app" written for them.

    (Not to mention that a J2ME application would be an obvious thing to do too, since this is really the biggest platform overall, catering for the vast majority of phones.)

    Oh, and if you're going to reply telling me that the Iphone is more popular, have the decency to look up actual market data, rather than redefining market sales to mean something completely different, like "mindshare" or "what me and my mates brag about owning".

    Then again, since this seems such a bad privacy feature, I guess I shouldn't worry. Iphone users already have to have their posts tagged with an Apple advert "I'm posting with an iPhone!", so why not give away more info too?