CTN Consulting

Facebook Places

Yesterday Facebook announced FACEBOOK PLACES.  With Facebook Places, you can easily share where you are, what you’re doing and the friends you are with right from your mobile.  Check in and your update will appear on the Place page, your friends’ News Feed and your Wall. Tag the friends you’re with so they can be part of your update.  Appear in “Here Now” to friends and others nearby who are also checked in. After checking in, just tap “Here Now” to see who else is checked in where you are.

This feature is available in the US for users who have access to the Facebook iphone application and other mobile devices.

To access it from other mobile devices, please:

1. Point your browser to http://touch.facebook.com.
2. Click the Places tab.
3. When you are prompted to share your location, tap “Share Location.”

The Place Page

A Place page will show you a map of where the Place is located, a list of friends who are currently checked in at the Place, if any, as well as a Friend Activity stream of other friends who have visited the Place in the past.

In the “People Here Now” section, you can see others who are checked in with you at that place. This section is visible for a limited amount of time and only to people who are checked in there.  If the Place page has been claimed by the official representative, the Place page will contain additional relevant information about the Place. You can post a story about the Place page to your profile by clicking the “Share” button on the bottom left of the page.

For example, if you are checked in at a Place and you have not turned off “Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in”  in your privacy settings, you’ll appear in the “Here Now” section of the Page, which is visible to your friends and other people checked in nearby.

Privacy Settings

Do you not want others to know where you have been and where you are? If not, please read on.

There are four important privacy settings that you may want to tweak:

1. Places I check in.
2. Include me in “People Here Now” after I have checked in
3. Friends can check me in to Places
4. Things your Friends applications can share about you

Here are some steps to follow to customize your setting:

1) Log in to Facebook. From the Account menu on the top-right corner of the page, choose Privacy Settings. Click the pencil next to the “Customize settings” link.

2) Under the “Things I Share” heading, there are two things you may want to change. (By default “Places I check in” should be set to only be visible by your friends.) If you want to disable this feature to your friends as well, use the drop down menu to do so.
You can click on custom and then set “Make this Visible to” “Only Me”. Below that option is “Include me in ‘People Here Now” after I check in.” This will let people know you’re at a particular location via the location’s page or in a search for people near you. Uncheck “Enable” if you don’t want this.

3) If you don’t want your friends to check you into Places, go down to the section called “Things Others Share” and locate “Friends can check me in to Places.” Set this to “Disabled” if you don’t want your friends checking you in.

4) After you are done making these changes, please hit the “Back to Privacy” button on the top left-hand corner. On the bottom, you will see “Applications and Websites”. Click the “Edit your Settings” link, and then again “Edit your Settings” under the “Info accessible through your friends”.  Anything checked is available to Facebook apps used by your friends. The last checkbox in this section is “Places I’ve visited,” so uncheck that if you want to prevent your friends’ apps from accessing places you are, or have been.

What will happen to FourSquare now that Social Media Giant Facebook has entered the arena? Have you used Facebook Places yet? If so, we would love to hear your thoughts on it.