Hi
It's been quite a month or so in the digital world, with launches including:
- Facebook Places
- Google Instant Search
- A new much improved Twitter homepage
- Google's social strategy steps forward with the Google me announcement.
We'll endeavour to tell you about all in separate posts this week. Let's start with Facebook Places, which launched in the States last month. The UK and Japan have since followed and we are due pretty soon, possibly October (if you go to your Facebook app on the Iphone you'll see the button is ready and waiting)
It's hardly a surprise as Facebook's move in to location has been mooted for quite some time, it follows the likes of Gowalla and Foursquare in to location, who combined have around 4 million users globally. Facebook, with its 500m will immediately have a leg up in the game of course...
As ever with any Facebook functionality, it's seemingly hit by controversy - this time over minors sharing their location. Any 13-17 year olds using the service will have added security but it's still kicked up a wee bit of a storm.
What's it all about? making friend connections easier, find out recommendations on restaurants, bars - whatever, receive discounts, special offers, special event invites - all based around your personal location.
Anyway, check it out here, and watch this space for the Australian launch.
Now we are seeing a crop of new companies who provide an interface which collates your facebook places and foursquare check-ins. Backtop is one example http://zenbe.com/blacktop It packages your checkins into trips which the user can then annotate, adding photos and comments.
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