As of 2 p.m. PT today, Facebook has opened its Places Read API for all developers.

The Read API will scrape Facebook's data so your app can access a user's checkins and his or her friends' checkins, as well. You'll be able to grab all checkins made with Places and Places-enabled applications. Facebook is hoping the apps created or augmented with this API will enhance real-world social experiences such as going to a concert, attending a conference or traveling on vacation.

You can also get checkin data from specific Places and Pages.

Most devs won't yet have access to the Write and Search APIs; Facebook is only making those available to select partners in a private beta. For example, Yelp, Gowalla and Foursquare will be able to push their checkins to Facebook Places, allowing users to simultaneously checkin to their services as well as Facebook's.

Access to these APIs should be available within a few months, according to Facebook engineer Ben Gertzfield.

Gertzfield also cautions developers about user privacy and permissions. "It's important to remember that all access to location information through the Graph API respects a user's privacy controls... When a person installs an application that needs their location to provide a relevant experience, the application must request access through Facebook's clearly labeled permissions dialog," he said.

"Developers cannot share location information without a user's express permission, and every user has control over what their friends can share via the API," Gertzfield added.

The Places data will be available through the Graph API. Each checkin is linked to a checkin ID that represents an object in the graph. Each checkin is also tied to a specific location (represented by a Facebook Page with a unique Page ID). You can learn more about the Places Read API by checking out the Graph documentation.

While we're itching to see what games, marketing apps and other features will come from full access to all the Places APIs in the future, we're also fairly intrigued to know what you'll be doing with the Read API alone. The incredible power of knowing where your friends are at the exact moment they're there could be harnessed in a variety of interesting ways, both for fun and for profit. In fact, we can see big brands (who don't have the pressure of trying to build a business on someone else's platform) getting a lot out of these APIs.

What do you think? How can the Places Read API best be put to use? Do you have any big ideas or plans for the near future?

Be sure to link to your projects in the comments; we and our readers would love to test out a few new Places-related apps.