wirefresh

Breaking at an unfeasibly early hour this morning is the hot news that Facebook is launching its long-rumoured location-aware, check-in product, called Places.

The new service sees Facebook partnering with Gowalla and Foursquare, with representatives from the two rival services taking the stage at a special event at Palo Alto, California at 2am UK time.

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Although Google apparently waved a $550m wad in the direction of  Yelp last year, they found themselves turned down by the local search, social networking and user review site.

That decision may prove to be a bit of a whoopsie for Yelp, seeing as Google has just charged straight into the heart of their core business with the release of Google Places, which comes bundled with Google Maps for mobile v4.4.

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