Facebook has unveiled a new feature that lets members share their whereabouts with friends while on the move.
Facebook Places is the social networking site's first step into location-based services for people who own smartphones equipped with satellite position tracking capabilities.
Members can "check-in" at restaurants, bars, or other social venues and let their friends at the social network instantly know where they are and with whom.The launch includes an application for iPhone handsets, and members with smartphones featuring web browser software supporting geo-location and HTML5 can use it at the mobile website touch.facebook.com.
The feature is initially only available in the US and while the company will eventually roll it out worldwide to its 500 million users, a spokesman for Facebook UK said its release here was some months away.
"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 said at the launch event at the firm's headquarters in California.
Facebook says privacy is a key feature of Places and users could control who they share location information with.
The site has previously been criticised for failing to safeguard the information members post on their profiles.
The commercial potential with Places is with users being able to declare wherever they are whenever they want, opening themselves up to offers, suggestions or advertisements about nearby businesses.
Facebook said it had no immediate plans to pursue this, but the advertising market driven by small businesses such as restaurants and stores is estimated in the tens of billions of dollars a year in the United States alone and has attracted online companies like Google and Yelp.
The feature has been introduced as improved GPS technology in handheld phones has seen location-based social networking services like Gowalla and Foursquare become increasingly popular.
Their members let friends see where they are and automatically update Facebook profiles with the information.
"This validates that we are onto something," Foursquare vice-president of partnerships Holger Luedorf said at the Places launch.
"We definitely want to help people connect their online and offline worlds."
yahoo.com