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"Facebook Places is almost here, and we're about to find out just what geolocation concoction Facebook has been cooking up for the last few months.\nWe're here live at Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto, California, for a press event.  The world's largest social network is expected to unveil its new geolocation features, dubbed by most \"Facebook Places.\"\nHow will Facebook handle geolocation?  What will it do to protect user privacy?  Will it integrate other checkin services?  Is Facebook Places a Foursquare killer?\nWe're about to get all of the answers.  Here are my live notes from the event:\nFacebook Places Live Notes\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\nMashable's Ben Parr getting ready at Facebook HQ ... the announcement is currently running 15 minutes late\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\nThe press is being moved by bus to Facebook's main building for the announcement.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\nAlmost go time ... we hope\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\nThe Facebook Places project lead demos the new features.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\nCEO Mark Zuckerberg looks on.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\nA screenshot of Facebook Places on iPhone.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\nGowalla talks about its partnership with Facebook.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\nAnother screenshot of Places.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\nAnother screenshot of Places.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\nFoursquare talks about its partnership with Facebook.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\nFacebook's Chris Cox talking about Places.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook Location Launch\nThe Facebook team answers questions from the audience.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAll posted times are in Pacific Standard Time\n4:30 PM: We're waiting here at Facebook's offices on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto with the rest of the media.  They're going to usher us in soon.\n4:50: Facebook decided to change its plans; they've stuck us on two shuttles to its California Street offices so they can make its announcement to its employees at the same time.\n4:58: We've arrived.\n5:06: We're now waiting in another lobby...\n5:15: Yet another room, this one is packed with Facebook employees and the press.  Mark Zuckerberg is just standing around with his team while people take pictures.\n5:23: Zuckerberg has taken the stage.  \n5:25: It's official \u2014 Facebook Places is real.  \"We've been working on this for a while ... more than a few months.\"\n5:26: Zuckerberg is talking about how he knew it was ready \u2014 his girlfriend was able to discover that Chris Cox and another person were nearby.  Apparently there are three components to Facebook Places.\n5:28: Facebook is playing a movie discussing the advantages of Facebook Places.  They're discussing check-ins, and much of it sounds like Foursquare.  \n5:30: Three key components: Help you share where you are, help you find where your friends are, and discover new places around you.  It launches on mobile devices (web) and in the company's new iPhone app tonight. \n5:30: Check-ins are part of the platform.  So is adding places.  One difference between it and Foursquare is that Facebook doesn't just show you nearby places, but places it thinks are relevant to you.\n5:31: Place Pages on the web.  It has maps and who's checked in...more on it in a moment.\n5:33: Photo tagging has been taken to places.  You can \"tag\" friends that are with you at a specific location.  Thus, everybody doesn't have to check-in on their own. Tagging seems to be a selling point of the platform, but does this present a privacy issue?\n5:37: There's a \"not now\" feature to not broadcast your location.\n5:37: Now we're getting into the meat of the privacy controls.  You can remove any check-in, settings are defaulted to friends only.  \"Here Now\" is on after you check-in.  Tagging only lets you tag your friends and notifies you whenever you're tagged.  You can always remove any tag.\n5:39: You can turn off being tagged in Facebook Places.\n5:39: You can report a place on the iPhone if it's inaccurate or don't want it on the system (say your home, for example).\n5:40: Now the company is talking about the API and developers.  There's a Read API for reading check-ins and learning more about check-in pages.  There's a Search and Write API for making check-ins and searching through them.\n5:41: Gowalla's CTO Scott Raymond is on stage.\n5:42: Gowalla is talking about the integration.  Gowalla's UI remains the same, but Gowalla stamps will appear on Facebook pages.\n5:43: Foursquare's Holger Luedorf, VP of Mobile &amp; Partnerships, is on stage.\n5:44: Foursquare is discussing its platform and its gaming and reward elements, as well as badges.  He's talking more about how they'll build upon it, but not too many specifics.  They just look forward to working with the Facebook team.\n5:47: Next: Eric Singley, Director of Mobile Products at Yelp.  He's discussing the company's mobile apps and its check-in product.  Their integration is simple: every time you check-in, you can share it with your Facebook friends, Twitter, or just to your Yelp friends.  It publishes a photo of the business as well as some info about it on your wall.\n5:49: More partners! Keith Lee, CEO of Booya!, creators of MyTown.  He's talking about InCrowd, which is a game and service for interacting with friends in a virtual world.  It has full API integration with reading, writing and searching Facebook Places.\nOh, random observation: I don't think Foursquare's all that thrilled to be part of this.  It's more out of necessity, as I wrote in an op/ed piece a few days ago.\n5:51: VP of Product Chris Cox is on stage.  He's discussing how the places we go are critical (bars, restaurants, etc.).  This is a discussion of the theories of Ray Oldenburg, a famous urban sociologist.  It's a discussion of the \"Third place,\" where we interact with each other.  \n5:54: \"Technology can be the thing that pulls us away from the night club and out to the nightclub .. out to the bar...\"  The driving force is to keep the Third place alive and bring people together with the social graph.\n5:54: Cox is really making a higher level argument for Facebook Places and location-based services in general.  He's talking about how Facebook Places will be a collective archive of our memories of what we experienced at a specific location or event, such as Lollapalooza.  The company sees it as an evolution of the scrapbook or the photo album \u2014 now those stories will get more attention, those stories will be pinned to a physical location.\nQ&amp;A\n- Q: Monetization plans? (I asked this question)- A: Zuckerberg: They're focused on getting the three core elements right (finding friends, checking-in, building stories about places), but he can see things such as rewards or deals with locations/companies in the future.  But he'll have to \"check-in later\" about it.\n- Q: BlackBerry and Android?- A: All mobile apps that can support it will support it, which means Android and Blackberry.\n- Q: Business Pages, can they be linked?- A: \"Is this your business?\" is a feature of the Places product.  You can claim a business page.\n- Q: When did development start? (from Taylor Buley of Forbes)- A: Skunk work project happened last year.  Only around December when the team really came together around the vision behind Places.\n- Q: Can you check into streaming events like a movie or TV show?- A: No.\n- Q: What if a place is closed down?- A: The Place page will still be there.  It won't go away."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/08/18/facebook-launches-its-location-features-live/>