Irish users receive brief taste of Facebook Places


17 Dec 2010

Irish Facebook users took to the internet after they were given access to Facebook Places, only to find it disabled shortly after.

Users tweeted that the geolocation service was now available on their Facebook accounts, after waiting for it to be introduced to Ireland.

However, it went offline awhile later, removing the functionality for Irish users.

The event occurred at a similar time to Facebook’s accidental leak of prototypes last night, before the site was taken down for a short period and the leaked services were removed.

A Facebook spokesperson was unable to comment as to why it happened or whether it was related to the protoype leaks, however, he said that while Facebook wanted to roll out the service to as many places as possible, there were no plans to bring Facebook Places to Ireland just yet.

“While we have no plans to announce today regarding availability in Ireland, we intend to expand our location data to include more countries and are always working hard to bring our products and features to every user around the world,” said the spokesperson.

Facebook Places allows users to “check in” themselves and their friends to locations they’re currently in, in order to share where they are to their friends or recommend new places they have discovered.

Countries where Facebook Places is currently available in include the US and the UK.