BlackBerry checks in on Facebook Places

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has added access to Facebook Places, the social-networking site's location-sharing service.

With Facebook Places, users can choose to attach your GPS or assisted GPS (A-GPS) location to a map, type what you are doing there and allow others to see where you are, what you are doing and who is with you. The Facebook for BlackBerry smartphones version 1.9 is now available for download via BlackBerry App World.

This gallery explores the checking-in process for the Facebook Places for BlackBerry update.

As soon as you load up Places, which is the furthest icon to the right at the top of the application, it will attempt to acquire your location based on your device GPS. From here, it will either temporarily store a specific set of co-ordinates or a rough area of where you are located. This will help later on when it loads up various other places in that vicinity of where others have checked into recently.

The check-in button will appear once it has acquired your exact or nearest-best location. You can also see where your Facebook friends have been and when. Places will show if multiple people have checked in together, although this process requires some synchronisation between users. In the example pictured above, two people have checked into a particular place at the same time, but not together.

Depending on where you are and who has been there before, you will receive a list of places in that area which match up to your location. This links into pre-existing Facebook pages which can be used to promote businesses, buildings and events based at that location. If that place has not been been added to this database, then you can create a new place.

Facebook also allows a user to add his or her status to a Places update, combining the location and status updates.

Users can also tag their friends, an option that can be disabled in the full Facebook privacy settings.

Once you are checked in, it will instantly display it on your news feed.

Finally, this is how the Places update looks to others. Be careful to keep your privacy settings updated, though. Users can give access to Places updates through Facebook's account settings.

This ZDNet UK-selected story originally appeared as Updated Facebook for BlackBerry: Now includes Places on ZDNet.com.