Facebook introduced a check-in feature for its mobile equipped users who are inclined to tell their friends exactly where they are at any given point in time during the day. As CNN reports, the good folk at Facebook have given special attention to users' privacy concerns. My personal solution to these type of privacy concerns is to not go out of my way to tell anyone where I am or what I'm doing, but that's just me.
Michael Sharon wrote of the official Facebook blog, "Ever gone to a show, only to find out afterward that your friends were there too? With Places, you can discover moments when you and your friends are at the same place at the same time."
On the bright side, this technology can be viewed as encouraging spontaneous bonding experiences and social cohesion. There is a remote possibility that it could impinge on the party planning business, or be used by political dissidents to orchestrate impromptu civil unrest. Worst case, the technology might be used to co-ordinate the illegal activity of street gangs. If Facebook wants to focus on creating a service that would be useful for the social lives of users, there may be surprises in store when it finally comes out all the ways of devious and inventive societies on the fringe. Whatever can be used can also be misused.
I'd bet that before the end of the year there is a technical means to spoof the system into reporting you at one location when in fact you are at another. The market for the app would be cheating husbands or wives, and there aren't that many systems which genius hackers can't crack.
The recent development at Facebook puts it in direct competition with other local mobile social media providers like Foursquare Labs Inc and Gowalla. Facebook's plan to make the new service pay for itself is unclear. I predict that some form of advertising will be involved.
To use this new service requires one of the smartphones supported by Facebook.
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