If you live in New York City and open Facebook today while you're out and about, you might see something new. The social network is rolling out a product today that pushes content to its users based on their location.
The feature, called Place Tips, works simply enough. Facebook checks where you are when you access the app and pushes content to the top of your News Feed based on your location. So, if you're at the Strand Book Store, you'll be able to see posts by all of your friends who tagged themselves there, see photos of people you know there, and get pushed directly to the store's Facebook Page. Who knows, this post from BuzzFeed might show up in the mix too.
It means that Facebook is going to get better at giving you content that has real-world context, similar in intent to its push to be the dominant social media forum for the Super Bowl this weekend.
It also means that Facebook is going to be getting much, much better at knowing where you are, where you've been, and, likely, even where you're going. That may freak some people out, so its starting small and trying to manage expectations.
Rather than a big global roll out, Place Tips is currently only available in New York. It's being developed there in part because of the challenge it represents. Debuting and developing a location-based service in such a dense city is no easy task — there's little to no margin of error for businesses in Manhattan, and no one wants to be told how good the restaurant next door is once they've been seated.
To hone in on your location, Facebook is going to use a mix of cellular networks, GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth beacons, which have a smaller range, that it will be distributing to businesses for the distinct purpose of identifying when someone is there.
Some of that, obviously, could be seen as invasive. Facebook will know your location with increasing accuracy as Place Tips improves in the coming months and expands to other cities. The developer I spoke to was aware of this and eager to run down the reasons that people shouldn't be nervous. Namely:
*Place Tips won't be used to share your location with your followers. The feature is just there to show you content associated with your location.
*People can opt out of Place Tips at any time.
*You can hide Places from ever showing you Tips.
*Place Tips will not trigger push notifications.
It's a massive undertaking for Facebook that may result in getting new, highly accurate data out of its users. Right now the intent is to use the technology to tell people stories related to the real world, but the fact that this data will be tied to businesses suggests it could also have a lot of commercial.
We already give companies all kinds of location data, but it's typically for some sort of tradeoff. Google, for example, knows exactly where you travel to and from if you use Maps. In that instance, there's a social contract in place: Maps is so useful that giving up your data likely seems a fair price. Place Tips could be a worthwhile addition for some users, but its lack of immediate real-world utility and passive location collection that makes it feel like a backdoor into something bigger could be a tough sell.