Where are you?

Tell the World, I want to get off

Interesting.
I now have available on my iPhone the new Facebook Places feature.
Notices that a small group of friends in UK suddenly started posting locations on Friday.
So I give it a go and hey, it works.
A quick “search” in the app gave me a list of possible locations I could be in that didn’t in the actual office but entering just the first three letters led to a precise match.
So then to play with it a bit.
I was able to see where my activated friends were. By this I mean those that had used the Places feature themselves.
So I knew that “Joe” that was sitting opposite was indeed at work coz Facebook told me so.
I spoke to a friend and got his permission to “check him in”. Did so and my status changed to include that I am with “Jim”.
Jim’s status, however, was completely unaffected, no status update.
Excellent.
Later, on the way home, I plotted my journey from train station to train station.
This did work well but felt a bit odd. I have yet to decide how I will use this feature. Perhaps as an alternative to the standard posts, unless I don’t want people to know where I am. So now people will be suspicious if we don’t post via Places.
Anyway, I used the several times without hiccups. Got a bit distracted at one station when it said “Lucy” was there. I didn’t know Lucy, or even heard of her before. But she was good looking, shared a lot of info on her profile and was very close.
I could have viewed a few more pics of her and wandered the station and found her. The feature also has a “near” rather than exact match. This can’t be right.

So we have two main issues to discuss:

1. Checking in friends
2. People in same location

The first ONLY posts to your status and by default is only visible to your friends.
The second is more worrying. I can hunt people close to me. Literally. Stalker heaven. Look who’s close. Like the look of them? Well now you know their name and probably a whole lot more.

Imagine, just imagine, how this could be abused.

My advice: use with caution and never when you are alone or vulnerable. It is a bit of fun and can be useful care is needed. As always, check your Facebook policies regularly.

Facebook Places is available on all major mobile platforms.
Here’s a short BBC article on the issue.

As always, open for comment.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Well, that’s the point