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.
