With Facebook Places already available in the United States, UK and Japan it’s about time that it finally arrived at the homes of our neighbors to the north.
Facebook Places is now slowly rolling out to Canadian Facebook users, showing up some user streams. Canada is the fourth country to receive the new option.
The move is a big step forward for Facebook/Canada relations which were strained last year when the Canadian government told the social network that they were violating their countries citizen privacy laws. This time around Facebook Places is “friends only” defaulted with the option to turn off the program completely which should keep officials at bay over increasing privacy concerns.
In reponse to privacy concerns over the new Places option Anne-Marie Hayden, a commissioner’s office spokesperson told CBC News:
“Obviously, we wouldn’t have any complaints about it at this stage, so I don’t think I can say whether it complies with federal privacy law or not,” she said. “We haven’t had an opportunity to thoroughly examine it.
“[Geo-location is] something we are very interested in, obviously, because there are obvious privacy issues. It’s the type of thing we’ve been examining in a number of fora.”
The features being offered by Facebook Places Canada are the same as the U.S. version, with new features expected to roll out in the near future as Facebook continues to compete in the space currently ruled by Foursquare and Gowalla.
We’ll give it a little more time before we comment on the privacy concerns associated with Facebook Places.
