Facebook Places could meet skepticism on college campuses

Facebook’s opt-in feature that lets friends check each other’s locations could be useful for colleges and universities tracking the most popular campus destinations, but social media experts say students haven’t yet embraced geo-tagging in any form.

Facebook announced Aug. 18 that its 500 million members can now use the company’s Places application on their smart phones to tell friends where they are—a local restaurant or movie theater, for example—much like the geo-tagging services Yelp, Gowalla, Booyah, and Foursquare.

Places requires a free download update to the Facebook mobile application, and once users “check in,” they can show their Facebook friends where they are. Members can block the general Facebook population from seeing their location.

A Facebook member can “tag” friends using the (at) symbol, and the friends can respond by revealing their location if they accept the tagging request.

“Only your friends can see when you visit or are tagged at a place, unless you have specifically set your master privacy control to ‘Everyone,'” Michael Eyal Sharon, a Facebook representative, wrote in a statement on the company’s official blog. “You also have the choice to set more restrictive customized settings.”

Menachem Wecker, co-founder of the Association for Social Media & Higher Education, a group based at George Washington University, said colleges that have connected with current and prospective students through Facebook could use the Places application to track campus hot spots and foot traffic patterns.

The application could be a “good way to monitor who checks in on campus [so] they can identify prospective students, staff, and faculty members, [and] they can see what locations are frequented by students, and a variety of other really useful statistics that will only help them better serve their constituents,” said Wecker, a writer for George Washington’s online news service.

“All it takes are a few really plugged-in and energized faculty, staff, and students to start a digital revolution on campus, and I expect that to be the case with Facebook as well.”

Facebook took a proactive stance against privacy advocates who have heaped criticism on the social media giant in recent years as the company’s security settings have come under intense scrutiny.

“With Places, you are in control of what you share and the people you share with,” Sharon wrote on the Facebook blog. “You choose whether or not to share your location when you check in at a place. … When you are tagged, you are always notified.”

Still, privacy advocates, social media consultants, and some in higher education said expanding geo-tagging services could pose security risks to students with Facebook accounts.

Shel Israel, author of two books on social media and a social media consultant to businesses and corporations, credited Facebook for making Places an “opt-in” feature. But a student who allows a large Facebook community of friends to track his or her foray through a local downtown area could be inviting trouble.

“That’s a red flag of danger, and messages like that go up all the time,” said Israel, whose latest book, Twitterville, hit bookshelves in September 2009. “It can create dangers that need to be remedied.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California released a statement just hours after Facebook Places was unveiled, criticizing the company for making it easy to opt in to the application, while a member would have to delve into his or her Facebook privacy controls to opt out of the program.

“Places allows your friends to tag you when they check in somewhere, and Facebook makes it very easy to say ‘yes’ to allowing your friends to check in for you,” the statement said. “But when it comes to opting out of that feature, you are only given a ‘not now’ option (a.k.a. ask me again later).”

The ACLU statement also said that a Facebook member’s “here now” list—showing other members where they are—isn’t a guard against others using the Places application.