You can Use Facebook Places with Foursquare, Gowalla and Any Other App

With Facebook Places out the door, the feature presents a huge opportunity for developers. Facebook is providing third-parties with a number of ways of tapping into the Places feature, either to use the places data already available and, later on, to be able to check in users at a location.

"Today we released Places, a new way for people on Facebook to share where they are, see where their friends have checked in, and discover interesting places nearby," Facebook Places engineer Ben Gertzfield wrote.

"As part of the rollout, we're making Places available to developers via the Graph API, so you can integrate location features into your own mobile applications, websites, and applications on Facebook," he added.

Starting later today, developers will be able to access the Places data through the Graph API. The data could be used in a number of ways, Facebook lists several examples like a travel app to see if any of your friends have visited a location you want to go to or an app to see where your friends or colleagues are at a conference or event.

Facebook has put in place several ways of ensuring that applications don't abuse the feature. Any app that accesses location data must be approved by the user and explicitly granted permission to do so.

Apps will be able to share the location data only with the users' approval. Also, none of your friends will be able to share your location through applications unless you specifically allow them to.

But this is just part of the functionality, a much more interesting use is the possibility to check into a location on Facebook through other apps. For now, developers don't have access to this feature, but the social network says it will be available in the coming months.

A few select partners do get access to the functionality at launch though and it's a who's who of location services, Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and Booyah, the company behind MyTown.

On Foursquare and Gowalla, you'll be able to check in and publish the activity on Facebook. Interestingly, badges and titles will also show up on the social network.

With Yelp you'll be able to transfer your check ins to and from the site to Facebook. Finally, Booyah created a dedicated app based on Facebook Places, called InCrowd which will enable users to connect with others around them.