Facebook Places went live in Bulgaria more than half a year after its debut in UK, the social network's first entry into Europe for its location-based service.

Facebook Places is now available also in Brazil, India, Egypt, South Africa, the Philippines and Israel, according to user reports.

The in-house service for checking into venues and businesses in the real world, Facebook Places first started rolling out only to U.S. users in mid-August 2010.

Barely a month after that, the service launched in Japan, followed by a UK launch a few days after that. Since then, it's been a sporadic, mostly unannounced rollout for the rest of the world.

The number of Bulgarians on Facebook has reached 2 million, according to data of the Bulgarian-Danish Internet marketing solutions firm Komfo.

This means that almost one-third of Bulgaria's population, and every other Bulgarian Internet user is registered in the most popular global social network.

Bulgaria's "Facebook penetration rate" is thus similar to that of Greece, Slovenia, and Hungary. The "second million" of Bulgarians have joined Facebook in the last 13 months.