The University of Kentucky, if all goes according to the campus’s marketing plan, could pop up in 1.3 million Facebook news feeds during the fall semester—and students might just learn something about maintaining online privacy in the process.
The Lexington, Ky., university [1] placed six-foot wooden Facebook Places logos in six campus locations with the heaviest foot traffic to encourage students to “check in” using Facebook’s geo-tagging application, which lets users show friends where they are—the campus library, for instance.
Places, which is similar to geo-tagging services Yelp [2], Gowalla [3], Booyah [4], and Foursquare [5], launched in August and drew skeptical reviews [6] from many in higher education. Facebook users must opt into Places before the application displays the person’s location.