MARCH 9, 2010, 1:44 PM

Facebook Will Allow Users to Share Location

By NICK BILTON

Starting next month, the more than 400 million Facebook users could begin seeing a newkind of status update flow through their news feed: the current locations of their friends.

Facebook plans to take the wraps off a new location-based feature in late April at f8, thecompany’s yearly developer conference, according to several people briefed on theproject, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discussunannounced services.

In preparation for the introduction, Facebook updated its privacy policy last November.The new policy states: “When you share your location with others or add a location tosomething you post, we treat that like any other content you post.”

At that time, the company also offered some foreshadowing of the new feature: “If weoffer a service that supports this type of location sharing we will present you with an opt-in choice of whether you want to participate.”

Facebook has been working on a location-based tool for close to a year, but decided to waituntil the product was completely ready for mainstream adoption before announcing it,said the people with knowledge of the project.

Meredith Chin, a Facebook spokeswoman, said Tuesday that the company wasn’t ready todiscuss any possible location-based features. “We’re constantly experimenting with newthings around here, but we don’t have any details to share right now,” she said in an e-mail message.

The new location feature will have two aspects, according to the people familiar withFacebook’s plans. One will be a service offered directly by Facebook that will allow usersto share their location information with friends.

The other will be a set of software tools, known as A.P.I.’s, that outside developers can useto offer their own location-based services to Facebook users.

In the past, the company has relied heavily on its strong developer community to createinnovative content around new tools and features. This community has also beeninstrumental in spreading Facebook Connect, which allows smaller Web sites to give theircustomers the option of signing in using Facebook and tapping their existing socialnetworks.

Of Facebook’s more than 400 million users, about 50 percent log in to the site at leastonce a day, and 100 million people access the service from mobile devices. That makes the

10/03/2010 Facebook Will Allow Users to Share Lo…

…nytimes.com/…/facebook-will-allow-… 1/2

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

location feature an area of strong focus for the company.

The staggering number of users on the site has also brought a heightened level of internalscrutiny to the project, according to the people familiar with it. Facebook has been tryingto figure out how to add location data to its service without raising potential privacyconcerns or negative feedback from its users, as it has in the past with new features andredesigns.

One of the people familiar with the project said that the company was not trying to beatthe smaller location-based social networks, such as Loopt, Foursquare and Gowalla.

Instead, Facebook wants to go head-to-head with Google in the fight for small-businessadvertising. Facebook redesigned its business pages last year, with the hope of offeringmore features for small-business owners. According to Facebook, the Web site currentlyhosts more than 1.5 million local businesses from around the world.

In 2009, Google started Google Latitude with the pitch to let users “See where yourfriends are right now.”

Twitter, another Facebook competitor, has also added an option to include location datawith messages

10/03/2010 Facebook Will Allow Users to Share Lo…

…nytimes.com/…/facebook-will-allow-… 2/2