Social Media News

Now You Can Check In to Events on Facebook's iPhone App

As promised, Facebook has released a new version of its iPhone application that gives users the ability to check in to events. Version 3.4, released Monday, also now includes a map view for Places and the ability to unfriend Facebook friends in-app.

The new features, along with subtle news feed improvements and a user interface refresh for notifications, have been worked into the existing Facebook iPhone experience. Only the “Unfriend” button, a new, extended option when viewing a friend’s profile in the app, is explicitly called out with a noticeable red button.

The new event check-in functionality is housed within the events portion of the app. The app user can check in to nearby, upcoming events and tag their friends should they so choose.

Likewise, the map view for Places has been added to the Places section. Here users can toggle between “Activity” and “Map” options to view checkins in the standard list view or switch to see them on a map.

The updates make for a slightly enhanced overall application experience that pushes the user to check in to Facebook events and gives them the ability to unfriend their no-longer-wanted social network buddies.

Mobile continues to be an important priority for the company. Facebook revealed last week that 250 million people are actively using Facebook via mobile devices on a monthly basis. It released a new mobile website for all phones to better accommodate those users. Event checkins, for now, are isolated to the iPhone app.

Color App Vulnerable to “Geo-spoofers”

Actual location not a barrier for photo sharing

Josh Wolford | March 29, 2011 @ 10:38am

It has been well documented that if privacy is what you want, the Color app is not for you.  Color, of course, is the much talked about new app that allows users to share photos effortlessly with anyone and everyone in their vicinity.

Well, apparently that last part is a bit malleable.

Turns out the perception of one’s location is good enough to fool Color into letting you invade photostreams anywhere, anytime.  Within hours of its release, Veracode CTO Chris Wysopal tweeted:

@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal@threatpost with trivial geolocation spoofing the auth model of Color is broken 4 days ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

When he tested it out, he found that he could go anywhere and see anything – much easier than expected.  He used a jailbroken iPad and an app called FakeLocation.  With this app, he was allowed to bypass the iPad’s GPS and set his location to anywhere in the world.

I’m sure most of you can see where this is going.

When he opened the Color app, bingo!  He could now browse all the photos from an area hundreds of miles away.  “This only took about five minutes to download the FakeLocation app and try a few locations where I figured there would be early adopters who like trying out the latest apps,” Wysopal told Forbes’ Andy Greenberg. “No hacking involved.”

To prove his success, Wysopal (in New York City) sent Greenberg a screencap of Color CEO Bill Nguyen’s photostream (Palo Alto, California):

Once again, this “cheat” is not ruffling any feathers over at Color headquarters.  As a spokesman said to Forbes, they never promised privacy.  “It is all public, and we’ve been very clear about that from the very beginning. Within the app, there’s already functionality to look through the entire social graph. Very few people will probably do what you’re saying, but all the pictures, all the comments, all the videos are out there for the public to see.”

And how many Color users, happy to share their photos with any stranger around them, would really care that the stranger lives in another state – or country?

Facebook Check-Ins Come to Events

Facebook Finds More Ways to Harness User Location

Chris Crum | March 21, 2011 @ 10:23am

Facebook services are overlapping with those of major players in a lot of different industries. Even for the services Facebook doesn’t offer itself, third parties are offering them through various apps. Warner Bros, for example is starting go offer movie rentals through Facebook – a move many consider to be a potential threat to companies like Netflix.

The location-based service/check-in app space is something Facebook has been involved with for a while, though the Foursquare – the apparent leader here – hardly seems phased by the social network giant’s foray into this so far. Foursquare’s presence was felt considerably more throughout SXSW last week. That’s for sure.

Facebook isn’t done, however. You might say they’re just getting started. Both Facebook Places and Facebook Deals are relatively new, and will no doubt continue to be expanded upon. Facebook is also finding other ways to get people to “check in” however.

AllFacebook found that they’ve added a check-in option to Events pages, which are probably used a great deal more than either Places or Deals. According to AFB’s Jackie Cohen, the option to check in only appears on the day of the event, and when users are actually close by the address. It’s still unclear whether this feature has been rolled out completely, is still rolling out, or is just a test.

It does show, however, that Facebook is looking for more ways to play on location, and event-based check-ins could certainly be attractive for businesses just like any other check-in. Facebook will always have an advantage as long as its user-base is so large. People who check in on Facebook are more likely to share that info with their real friends than they are on any other service. That’s valuable. Foursquare is doing some really interesting things for businesses, but they’re still going to have to continue to contend with Facebook’s power of reach.

Facebook is also acquiring mobile app creator Snaptu. Obviously there is an increasing focus on mobile at the company. Who knows what will come from that buy.

Facebook Places Launches In More Countries

Big expansion for Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt competitor

Doug Caverly | March 18, 2011 @ 4:08pm

A service that exists to let people broadcast their physical location has, fittingly enough, begun operating in a few more spots.  There’s word today that Facebook Places now works in Brazil, Bulgaria, Egypt, India, Israel, Malaysia, the Philippines, and South Africa.

Facebook Places only crossed the Atlantic for the first time in September, rolling out in the UK, so the latest expansion makes for a quick – and impressive – continuation.  Assuming nothing goes wrong, it’ll demonstrate that Facebook has plenty of skill dealing with different languages and unusual technical demands.

The move also shows that Facebook thinks it’s addressed all the privacy issues related to Facebook Places to the satisfaction of many different cultures.

Then here’s one more interesting thing about the new rollout: it puts additional pressure on Orkut and Facebook’s check-in rivals.  After all, Brazil and India were two of only a handful of countries around the world where Google’s social network has achieved much success, and now people there have another reason to use Facebook.

As for how this could affect a company in the check-in space, Willis Wee pointed out, “1.7% of the Foursquare users come from Malaysia.  Foursquare last reported that it has 6 million users.  So, 1.7% would be equivalent to 102,000 users. . . .  That doesn’t look too good, especially when Facebook has over 10 million users in Malaysia.  If just 10% of users were to adopt the Facebook Places, it would be practically game over for Foursquare in Malaysia.”

Anyway, credit goes to Wee, who’s based in Malaysia, and Philippines-based Arnold Zafra for reporting the development.