Good News for everyone who does not want to wait until Facebook is opening Places for people outside of the US officially! There is a way to get it working today – right now! I jsut created my first Location here in Hamburg, Germany through the Facebook iPhone App.

If you try to use Places, Facebook tells you, that this Feature will be available in your region soon. And here comes the trick. Facebook is not using your Geolocation information from your GPS, but your IP to detect your current country (so, inside or outside of the US).

With VPN service you can easily get an US IP adress. I used Black VPN: feel free to use this promo code of me – WQMFETD (https://www.blackvpn.com/checkout/us/ – if you do, choose the three months option. At the next page you can enter the code and the price will be reduced to 5$ for three months)- and you will get three months for the price of one and I will get an extra free month for me as well. But any other VPN service will do as well.

As I said I used the Facebook iPhone App (make sure you got the latest update. This is necessary, to have the Places features already inside the App).

If you log in at Facebook (I had to logout and login again once to make sure to get a new session with the new IP adress)and go to the Places Tab (“Orte” in german) you will not get the “This service will be available in your region soon” message, but something else like “no friends close to you”. To add a new location press on “Wo bist du” (sorry folks, only have the exact german Button-naming here). Since there are no locations yet, press on “+” to add a new location and you will get a Form where you can enter the name and a description of the new location. Type it in press “hinzufügen” and there it is – your first location.

You will now have a “Location” Icon right to the status field (“Was machst du gerade”) at your profile or News Feed page as well. You can now use this to easily check in to existing locations or add new locations as well.

Note: it will only work while you have your VPN tunnel running (–> means, you have an US IP adress).

And now: enjoy!