World's leading social network Facebook has done almost everything right to ensure that it stays number one for the years to come. It also had a variety of applications and services. However, one thing it lacked was a location based service.

Facebook will now roll out a new location-based service in April, which will allow users to update their locations automatically.

According to a New York Times report, Facebook will introduce a new location-sharing feature next month during its f8 annual developer conference.

The new service means that Facebook's 400 million users will be able to see the locations of their friends in addition to their status updates.

The Times, citing people familiar with the company’s plans, said Facebook will provide its own service direct to its users and will also open up its Application Programming Interface (API) to other developers so that users of those services can share their location with their Facebook friends.

The move was foreshadowed in Facebook's updated privacy policy in November, when it added language stating that When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post.

The company at that time also stated that if it offered a location-sharing, it would allow users to choose to participate in an opt-in basis.

The company’s location-based service was reportedly not targeting smaller, popular location-based start-ups like Foursquare, but was instead aimed at competing with Google in the market for small-business advertising.

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