Yesterday, Facebook released an update to their iPhone App that added their new "Places" feature. Places is similar to other social networking sites like Gowalla and Foursquare in that the App can use your current location to alert your friends that you're currently visiting a particular nearby location/business via a "check in". I tested out the Places feature last night once it went live and it seems to work as you would expect. There are some Privacy concerns, so you should probably update your Privacy settings immediately to dictate who can see your check ins. See more about my Facebook Privacy Setting Recommendations here. Places is currently only available in the US.
Facebook also gains a feature I've been wanting in that you can now on a per status update basis decide who can see that particular update. I use the List feature quite a bit to decide who can see my photos and status updates. It's great to be able to do this via the iPhone App now. This has been available via the web interface for some time and I'm glad to see it make its way into the App. Lastly the Facebook App can upload photos and videos in the background when running under iOS 4.
You can get Facebook here from the 
Update your Privacy Settings Now!
Whether you ever plan to use Places or not as it stands right now your friends can tag YOU for places that they check in to without your consent. So you should still adjust your privacy settings as to who can see your Places "check ins" even you don't ever plan to use the feature yourself.
About Terry White
Terry is the co-author of The Best Selling "The iPhone Book" 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions. He has been active in the industry for over 25 years and is the founder and president of MacGroup-Detroit, Inc., Michigan's largest Macintosh Users Group, host of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and a technology writer - Terry White Tech Blog.
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