Facebook Places launches in Australia

Finally, Facebook’s geo-location service, Places, has gone live in Australia …and we only had to wait a month and half after the US launch…

Here is the overview page explaining what Places is and how to use it.

For those who want to use the service, Places is available in Australia from this morning via the Facebook iPhone application and on advanced mobile devices through the mobile site touch.facebook.com.

Many of you are probably wondering about the privacy settings on the service.

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Facebook says that users have full privacy control and can customise these settings as well as amend them from a mobile device.

Here is a video explaining how to control your information on Places.

As an overview though, check-ins are defaulted to friends only (unless your master setting is everyone) and under 18s will not appear in posts or check-ins to anyone but friends.  You can also always remove any check-in from your phone or on the web

Also, keep in mind that If you have given them permission, your friends can check you in by tagging you in a place where they are also checking in. This feature caused an uproar when Places first launched in the US,  but this setting can easily be disabled in your privacy settings so make sure you jump in and make sure it’s not enabled if you don’t want your friends pranking you by checking you into the beach during work hours…

Already there are murmurs around twitterland that this will spell the end of FourSquare and other similar services in Australia. I’m not convinced that will be the case, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Will you be using Facebook Places?

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