Facebook introduces new Nearby Friends feature for location sharing

[Guest Jared Peters]

 

Facebook is introducing a new feature that’s going to make its privacy-conscious users cringe. The new feature, called Nearby Friends, does exactly what it sounds like; it alerts you whenever you’re in the general vicinity of one of your Facebook friends. If you’re going to the movies or going out to eat, you can find out who’s near you to arrange a meet-up.

 

Fortunately, Facebook has some decent security measures in place to keep this from becoming a stalking tool. You can completely turn the feature off, if you so choose, which means you’ll never know when someone is nearby and they’ll never know if you’re nearby. Nearby Friends is also a two-way street of privacy, so if two people don’t both have the feature turned on, neither person can see each other. You can also fine tune who can see you, limited your visibility to select groups or friends, and you can set it up so it’ll only show you nearby during a certain time, so it’s not a 24/7 broadcast.

 

Personally, I know I’d never touch this feature, but maybe it’ll go over well with mobile users. You can expect the feature to hit Android and iOS apps in the coming weeks.

 

source:

Facebook

 

 

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