Facebook Silently Launches Places Directory, Takes On Yelp

Facebook has silently rolled out new 'Facebook Places' directory that lets users search for "great places in every city" across the world, leveraging its Graph Search platform and other tools.

From the Facebook Places page, users will be able to search for places in a city in different categories, like restaurants, hotels, bars, cafes, attractions, arts & entertainment, gyms, movie theatres, schools, landmarks and more.

The Facebook Places search results are ranked by user ratings and show comments from friends and others in the user's Facebook network. The page also list cities from different countries in the 'Explore other places' section. Users will also find a Bing-powered 'Cities Nearby' option at the bottom of a specific destination search page.

As reported by TheNextWeb, the new Places directory result integrates Facebook's Graph Search, Locations API and other elements. Facebook hasn't made any official announcement for the new integration as yet.

While there are many other apps and services (like Foursquare, TripAdvisor, Yelp) in a similar space, it is certainly a welcome integration for Facebook that might help social network gain more numbers. Users will also appreciate recommendations from their Facebook friends, which may be a wider base and probably more trusted than reviews from other services.

Recently, the company announced that its Messenger app has hit the milestone of 500 million monthly active users, growing steadily from 200 million active users in April.

Facebook's Director of Product Management, Peter Martinazzi, while making an announcement on Monday, said, "This is an exciting milestone but with a half billion people relying on Messenger to communicate and connect, it is also a reminder that there is so much left for us to do,"

Notably, Facebook recently separated Messenger from the main Facebook app and made it mandatory for all users to download the Messenger app to continue to enjoy messaging services.