Tonight, as expected, Facebook launched Facebook Places, their new location sharing feature at their "launch night" at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto. It will initially launch on the Facebook Touch website (touch.facebook.com) and on the official iPhone app, being updated later tonight. Simply "check-in" to share your location or tag friends in the shared location to proclaim that they are with you.


Each place will have it's own page on Facebook. You'll be able to see an image or a map, all the friends that checked into that particular place, and more. The default visibility for check-ins is to friends only, which can be changed if you are more or less sensitive about your location. You can always disable Places completely, too.

As for developers, Facebook is also launching a Places API that will allow you to implement Places into your application. Surprisingly, Gowalla, one of the top location sharing services, is one of Facebook's partners in launching Places and will be one of the first to include the API in their applications. This will enable users to use Gowalla with the option of also publishing that straight to Facebook using Places. Foursquare is also a partner in the process and is also planning to include the API. And as I'm typing this, Yelp is also a partner and you guessed it, will be using the API and will also soon be launching the ability to read other friends' check-ins right from the Yelp app. Other partners are utilizing the API in different ways as well. It's clear no one is being left to die here.

Facebook Places will launch on Facebook Touch and the iPhone application later tonight and on applications such as the ones mentioned above beginning Thursday. There are plans for BlackBerry and Android mobile devices as well.