Facebook is introducing a mobile
feature called Nearby Friends that taps into that steady stream of
location information so friends can track each other in real time. The idea is to make it easy for
people to meet up in real life, so they can have conversations in person
instead of comment threads, temporarily replacing Likes and LOLs with eye
contact and actual laughter. A live meet-up is also an excellent opportunity to
grab a selfie with your pal and upload it to the Facebook owned Instagram.
In a refreshing change, the new
Nearby Friends feature is notturned on by default.
tool finds your friends. Friends will not be able to see
where you are unless you decide live-tracking is something you want in your
life and visit Facebook's settings to turn it on. Making a potentially invasive
new feature opt-in suggests Facebook hasperhaps
learned from some of its past mistakes and
privacy problems.
You can choose to share your
general location with all your Facebook friends, close friends or a customized
list of people you feel most comfortable with. Further minimizing the potential
stalking factor, your location is only shared with other people who are also
using the feature and who have chosen to share their location with you.
When turned on, Nearby Friends
shows a list of approved Facebook friends who also use the feature and shows
their approximate location. A push notification can tell you how many of your
friends are nearby. Open the app to see a list of pals, the neighborhood or
city where they are, how many miles away that is from your current location,
and a time stamp of when they where there.
There is an option to share your
exact location with specific friends, which can be handy for coordinating large
groups at concerts or finding someone in a crowded area. Your friends will see
a little image of your face on a map for a set period of time. Nearby Friends will be available
on Facebook's iOS and Android apps, but will only work for select locations at
first.
Facebook, Instagram and many
other apps already include features that let people "check-in" to
locations, but those location features are different because you decide if and
when to share each specific location. You might check into a Starbucks
downtown, but never into your home or other spot you'd rather keep private.
Nearby Friends is continuously gathering details about where you are in the
background instead of waiting for a manual check-in.
This is not the first time an app
has used location information to physically connect friends. Similar apps such
as Highlight, which got a flurry of attention in 2012, mapped out the locations
of nearby strangers. Facebook also purchased a startup in 2012 called Glancee
that also connected strangers. That technology evolved into this new, more
private feature.
If you turn on the Nearby Friends
feature, Facebook starts collecting data on your exact location and keeps
details on where you've been in the past, not just places where you've used its
app to check in. It also collects location information even when the Facebook
app is closed.
But you can turn off this
location history in the Facebook app's settings. It's possible to delete
individual locations from a history, or clear the whole thing and start from
scratch.
Source BBC
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