Today, Facebook made a much waited for announcement about their entry into the geo-location game. They’ve announced Places, with a  focus on finding friends, checking in and building stories. They’ve partnered up with other exsisting companies that already play a major role in geo-location, like Gowalla, Foursquare and Yelp. Should be nice, now Facebook pages will be able to be linked to their place. All mobile apps will be supported at launch (tonight 8/18/2010)(Blackberry, Android and iPhone.) Mark Zuckerberg still really seems to have no plan on how to monetize on it, but it seems like a good direction for the company to move in. In terms of privacy, check-ins are automatically set for ‘friends only’ & you can remove and check-in. “Here now” only appears after a check-in so you can decide whether to share that or not. Tagging only lets you tag your friends and notifies you whenever you’re tagged. You can always remove any tag.

Mashable is covering the story live, as well as NY Times.

Also, explained on the Facebook blog.