Facebook is allegedly planning to roll out location sharing
capabilities next month, once again playing catch-up to other services
that have gained popularity thanks to location data. The rumor comes
courtesy of anonymous sources who have been "briefed on the project"
speaking to the New
York Times, who said that Facebook will announce the feature
at Facebook's annual f8
conference in late April.
The company's plans for such a feature have not been entirely
secret—Facebook hinted at location features when it updated its privacy
policy in November. Like other postings made to Facebook, location
information will only be made available to the people you
decide to broadcast it to.
"When you share your location with others or add a location to
something you post, we treat that like any other content you post,"
reads the policy. "If
we offer a service that supports this type of location sharing we will
present you with an opt-in choice of whether you want to participate."
The location features will come in the form of an API for third-party
developers and from Facebook, according to the Times' sources.
The feature will undoubtedly be popular among many of Facebook's 400
million users, as it has already proven itself with other services. For
example, Twitter added geolocation to
its API last year, not to mention that Foursquare,
Brightkite, Google Latitude, and Loopt have all built their success
solely upon the use of user location data. Needless to say, it's not
something that will be new to the Web, though it probably will be new to
a sizable chunk of Facebook's audience. Let's just hope the company
rolls it out the right way, as implied by its privacy policy, and
doesn't end up broadcasting everyone's locations to the world by
default.