On Wednesday this week Facebook launched ‘Places’. Its own location based application.

As Four Square, Gowalla and others have proved, we seem all to willing to ‘check in’ and in doing so give away our most valuable personal asset – our location.

Despite the Mayor badges and other medals on offer, we seem to do this for no reason other than to let people know where we are. Are they interested? Probably not, and yet we still feel the need. To me this justifys Stan Rapp’s quote this week, “this generation of consumers are the most narcisistic ever.”

We all manage our “I” brands carefully on Facebook specifically, and adding our whereabouts gives us another reason to talk about our favourite subject-ourselves. This isn’t a judgemental observation- I do it too!

How Facebook develop Places remains to be seen. Tying it in with retailers, targeted advertising and location based incentives will no doubt grow.

But how my friends now start to use a tool that is an integral part of their favourite social network, rather than a third party application will be fascinating.

More polishing of their “I Brands”? I bet they won’t be able to resist it! I’m going to have a play!