As we expected, Facebook in its press conference just announced its own facebook location feature which they named as “facebook places”. Facebook states the feature will have three primary components: First it will help you share where you are, help you find where your friends are, and discover new places around you. It also said it will be launching this on mobile devices(web) and in the company’s new iPhone app, which will be launched tonight.

Facebook is careful to mention the privacy ramifications of this after it has been involved in so much controvery lately. First of all, you can only tag people you are friends with on these check-ins. Also, by default, your check-ins will only be visible to people you’re friends with (though you can change this to be visible to everyone). You can also opt-out of having friends be able tag you in a location updates.

Don’t you worry if you are a present user of foursquare and Gowalla and have earned badges or pins on these sites, you will be able to transfer them over to facebook. Both will also allow you to check-in and publish the data to your Facebook feed. Even Yelp and Booyah have partnered with Facebook and are planning to launch new applications using facebook places api.