Facebook Places now live in South Africa

Finally, after two months, Facebook Places in available in South Africa. Facebook places, just like Foursquare is about sharing your location with your friends as well as seeing where your friends are. The only difference between Facebook Places and Foursquare is that it is within Facebook.

Before you can begin sharing your location with your friends, the social networking site requires your location. Just open your browser and click on to touch.facebook.com or use the Facebook app for your smartphone, and you’ll see a tab under “Inbox” called “Places.” Once you click on Places you will see recent check-ins as well as your friends’ check-ins. Once here, you can find out more details about the places your friends are checking into.

If you are unable to find the right place to check-in from, you can browse more locations by clicking on the right arrow button under the Places tab until you find the location you’re looking for. You can also check in with friends.

The list of locations comes from other people’s check-ins and listings from Bing’s mapping engine. This means you might have to add your location yourself — just click “Add”, and it will take you to a page where you are required to fill out a name and description the location you wish to add.

Though individuals can add a Facebook Place, business owners are able take the listing and turn it into a proper Facebook Page, with Likes and a Wall.

Foursquare’s rise in South Africa was short-lived, the launch of Facebook Places in South Africa could be in the injection of interest that users require to start checking-in again.