Facebook launches new service which will share your location to within half a mile
Nearby Friends will use your smartphone's GPS system to tell your Facebook friends you are nearby
Rather than share your exact location, it will show only that you are nearby, say, within half a mile
Feature must be turned on by the user, so people shouldn't expect to broadcast their location unknowingly
Launches amid the growing popularity of location-based mobile dating apps such as Tinder and Hinge
Most
users won't have the feature available right away, but rather in the
coming weeks and months and it won't be available to users under 18
The Nearby Friends feature must be turned on by the user, so people shouldn't expect to broadcast their location unknowingly.
It
will use your smartphone's GPS system to tell your Facebook friends you
are nearby
- provided they have the feature turned on as well. Rather
than share your exact location, it will show only that you are nearby,
say, within half a mile.
If you
like, you can manually share a more precise location with a specific
friend you'd like to meet up with. Friends can see where you're located
in a particular park, airport or city block. By default, your exact
location will be shared for only an hour, although you can change this.
Nearby
Friends launches amid the growing popularity of location-based mobile
dating apps such as Tinder and Hinge. But unlike those apps, Facebook's
feature will let you meet up only with people who are already your
friends.
Facebook,
whose motto has long been ‘move fast and break things,’ built a lot of
precautions in this new tool as it tries to avoid privacy fiascos that
often bubble up when it makes changes to its service.
The
new motto, ‘ship love,’ is evident in the cautious rollout of Nearby
Friends, said Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum,
an industry-backed think tank in Washington. He has advised Facebook on
privacy issues, including the latest feature.
He
believes Facebook is showing ‘a deeper appreciation that with a billion
users, any change needs to be implemented in a way that doesn't surprise
the audience.’ That's especially so when it comes to privacy,
especially when it comes to location sharing.
‘Once
you start bringing this to a mass audience, you need to be cautious,’
Polonetsky said, ‘so inadvertent oversharing is not possible.’
Nearby
Friends also won't be available to users under 18, said Andrea Vaccari,
a product manager at Facebook. He said the tool ‘makes it easy to join
your friends in the real world.’
Of
course, all the safeguards and slow rollout mean that most users won't
have the feature available right away on Thursday but rather in the
coming weeks and months. Initially it will go to people who are likely
to appreciate it, Vaccari said, such as people who have ‘checked in’ to
various restaurants, bars or other locations using Facebook.
Unlike
with other features, Facebook isn't forcing people to use Nearby
Friends. Therefore, there is a possibility it won't catch on widely.
Vaccari is optimistic that it will.
Vaccari
joined Facebook in 2012, when the company acquired Glancee, his startup
service for meeting nearby people who have friends and interests in
common. He has been working on the new feature since then.
Facebook employees have been testing Nearby Friends, and Vaccari cites ways it has helped people get together:
- When two people landed at the airport at the same time from different flights, they saw that they did through Nearby Friends and shared a ride home together.
- When two people were out shopping alone in San Francisco, they joined forces after seeing each other nearby.
Nearby
Friends, Vaccari said, isn't for the five to 10 close friends whom you
feel comfortable texting or calling up to hang out.
Rather,
he said, it's for the broader group of friends you enjoy spending time
with but wouldn't necessarily call. Nearby Friends may provide that
extra push. Users can limit whom they share their location with to
smaller groups of friends.
Users
who sign up will be shown a short tutorial on how the feature works.
Besides seeing friends who are nearby, users can also see which of their
friends are traveling, and in general which friends are using the
feature even if they are not nearby.
Facebook says there are no current plans to draw advertising revenue from Nearby Friends.
The
company says it does not currently target ads to users based on where
they happen to be at the moment, but uses their stated ‘current city’
and the location of their computer based on its numeric Internet
Protocol address.
