Chrome Central: Discover Friends Near You With Facebook’s Upcoming Nearby Friends Feature

via AndroidHeadlines.com |

nearby_friends

With some of the already available options out there to locate friends that are close by to you whereabouts, Facebook seems to want to enter the game with their own feature that introduces a friend finder of sorts. Nearby friends is an upcoming feature that Facebook is slated to introduce to the iOS and Android apps in the very near future, that would allow you to use the app to find which of the friends that are your list who are near you at any given time. Among already existent privacy concerns about the favorite social media app of many, this new friend locator seeks to dig up some new ones that people are sure to love and hate once it shows its face. The catch that Facebook is hoping will save it from too much backlash from users, is that it’s completely an opt-in service, so the choice to see and be seen is up to the user entirely.

When this feature hits, basically what it will do is allow you to opt in so friends can find you if you want to hit the town together. They also have to be opted in of course, or the feature will do no good. This could play out in many ways, from letting people sneak by others they don’t really care to converse with even if they are just around the corner downtown, to letting close friends know that you’re hitting up the local pub for a quick beer or late night snack. The nifty thing about the feature if you choose to use it is that you can designate groups of friends who can and can’t see your location. If there’s only one person however that you want to avoid, you can block that person specifically from seeing where you are, and open up your location to all others. The same goes for anyone that’s on your friends list, as they can choose to single you out too, so your goal is to find out who does that and then block them back, cause why would you want to find anyone that doesn’t want to find you right?

Not only will you be able to complete searches and look for friends on a whim, Nearby Friends can notify you when it finds a friend that is close so you don’t have to worry about checking. This makes the feeling of finding a friend who is near the same place more natural and makes it seem less like your hunting someone down. The feature will of course need access to your GPS if it’s to operate properly, so expect it to either kill your battery if your always using it, or rack up a hefty amount of data usage by keeping in a constant alert mode where it can ping you at a moments notice. The feature has yet to be updated into the app, but it’s coming soon so if you’re interested keep your eyes peeled. Until than, you’ll just have to stalk your friends the old fashioned way, by crawling their Facebook page looking for random posts about where they are, or just plain old bombarding them with text messages asking what they’re doing.