Facebook on Wednesday announced a new feature which allows mobile phone users to broadcast their location and track their friends.
Facebook Places, similar to Google Places which was launched in April, enables users to see others who have also “checked in” at a movie theatre, mall, or park and read their comments.
The social networking site is also offering web pages dedicated to individual businesses, showing their location, street-level images and customer reviews of their services or products.
With these location services, both Google and Facebook are trying to provide information about any location, including schools, parks and local businesses, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The sites are targeting ads in real-time to users of mobile devices.
The social network’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the local market is a big space and that both Facebook and Google will compete a little bit in this space.
Earlier this year, microblogging service Twitter also launched Twitter Places, a similar service which allows users to broadcast, or “tweet” their location.