With the increasing popularity and media mileage being gained by location-based social networking sites such as Gowalla and Foursquare, it is not surprising that the Facebook people will take notice of this. And this could be threatening to Facebook especially since this location-based social networking services can take away a number  of users from them.
So, what’s the best way to handle this threat? – Facebook decides to offer the same location-based services. NYT Bits Blog is reporting that Facebook is preparing to launch a new feature that will allow users to share their location. Â This will be launched in late April, just in time for Facebook’s f8 developer conference.
What this means is that starting April expect to receive status updates from your friends stating their current locations. But of course, sharing location among friends is just the tip of the iceberg. Â This new feature could also be the start of a social recommedation feature which eventually would bring in more brand participation Facebook.
This also explains why Facebook updated is privacy policy last November 2009, where part of the policy stated –  “When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post.â€
Facebook’s location feature will either be through Facebook’s site or through APIs that will be made available to small time developers.
It’s too early to tell whether which of the location-based services will this new Facebook kill. Although according to the report, Facebook is not really eyeing any of these startups but rather a bigger competitor – Google with its small-business advertising program powered by Google Latitude.
Originally posted on March 9, 2010 @ 7:28 pm