Facebook Places, have checked in yet?

It was great  to see the Foursquare representative  share the platform with fresh faced Mark Zuckerberg last evening as the CEO of Facebook launched  the company’s  geo location based tool, Facebook Places.

Frankly I thought  that the body  language of the Foursquare rep. suggested discomfort or maybe it was displacement, because no matter how he tried to present it, Foursquare was perhaps present at its own funeral last night. 

I  dabbled with Foursqaure, the location-sharing programme, since its inception but found it a lonesome place.  Few of my friends were on it, I took no real joy in being Mayor of a Mango Media Caribbean or Angelos’ ( I figure it’s because I’ve never been much of a gamer). And I missed the interaction that you get form Twitter and Facebook.   I  noticed that when I share selected Foursquare updates to Facebook, it was then I got responses and a wall conversation ensued. With Foursqaure  updates alone  it felt  I was just sending pings into  space.

Facebook Places promises to be different, less of a game  and more connection. Facebook says it is adding Places merely to enrich the social experience it already provides. The company says its users already post status messages. Users can tap a new Places icon in the Facebook app on their iPhones and do this more easily, complete with a map. (You initially can check in to Places only if you have Apple’s iPhone, though you can use a site at touch.facebook.com via your browser on other phones and laptops that can track your location and support HTML 5 technology.) 

“We’re just building a new way for people to share that information in an engaging way,” says one Facebook official at the launch

So what do you think Facebook Places? One of my Twitter friends lamented during the live launch last evening  that he didn’t want  Facebook knowing more about  him than it did already.  It’s one thing to share a thought or a picture on Facebook or Twitter, but telling people where you are physically was tipping the balance for him.

So do you feel the same, would you want people to know where you are 24 hours a day? Do you have any  privacy concerns?