Facebook's Awesome Dark Knight-Esque Live Check-In Display

If you hate the idea of Facebook gaining a location element, you’re really going to hate this. It’s awesome.

Tonight, immediately after their Places launch event, the company flipped the switch (an actual switch, by the way) to make the location product live. While it was a few hours before the new location-enabled iPhone app went live, touch.facebook.com went live for millions of users around the U.S. right away. And Facebook had some giant projections to showcase that.

As you can see in the video below and image above, all across the U.S. people immediately began checking-in when Facebook turned the feature on. Oh look, there’s Vikas at San Francisco Fine Arts. Oh, there’s Alex at Jenkins Canyon. Etc. Those glowing dots are people checking in. And big clusters of glowing dots mean a lot of people are checking-in in those areas (New York, San Francisco, LA, and a few other obvious ones).

Obviously, Facebook was just showing people’s first names to placate those worried about the privacy ramifications of such a wall. It’s a little like that wall of sonar monitors from The Dark Knight — which is to say, awesome.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCH8e1VNk0g&w=630]

It’s also a bit like Apple’s App Wall:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfCxVE3A84E&w=630]

More about Facebook Places:

• Facebook Places Goes Live On The iPhone. Check-In While It’s Hot (If You Can)
• Facebook Wants Advertisers To Help Build Out Its Directory of Places
• Facebook Has Been Working On This Location Feature For 8 Months
• Facebook Partnering With Gowalla And Foursquare For Places
• Facebook Places Coming To The iPhone App Tonight. Check-Ins With Friend Tagging
• Live From Facebook’s Location Event (Video Stream)
• Spotted: Facebook Location In Action. Meet Facebook Places!