

Facebook Find Friends Nearby - pdufour
https://m.facebook.com/friendshake

======
CWIZO
Great, another way for FB to show people I don't know down my throat.

I really don't get it. What does FB have to gain from me friending a million
users? I thought the point is to build meaningful connections with people I
actually know. But the way they are handling things is just stupid. The
"people you may know" widget on their page (web&mobile) has never ever
suggested a person I actually knew. Just some random friends of my friends
that I've just friended, or sometimes not even that. Can anybody shed some
light on this?

~~~
milesokeefe
I think they cater to both types. They want to make existing social
connections stronger but they also want to create them.

I think it makes a lot of sense for Facebook to implement a feature which lets
you friend people physically near you. There have been people I have never
talked to but simply seen around who I found on Facebook and became friends
with in real life, but otherwise wouldn't have without Facebook.

This form of social interaction may not interface well with yours, but it
doubtless does for others. Given that Facebook's business model is to appeal
to as many people as possible, and features like this don't cause any notable
quantity of people to discontinue using the service, it makes sense.

~~~
CWIZO
Maybe this feature isn't obtrusive, which is nice. But having a random
stranger on-top of my news feed every time I open FB on my phone is getting
really really old (people you may know).

------
Sami_Lehtinen
I personally think that it really sucks to post links that require
registration. It's just like those links "free what ever" and then they ask
for tons of personal details. No, it isn't free at all. This is something I
have commented several times in LinkedIn. It's promotion & data-grabbing, it
isn't public or free. So in this case, I would give -10 points to this link.

Eh, it's actually just like free stuff they mail you, you only pay $29 for
handing and posting costs.

Here is an article about that feature that you can read without registration:
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/24/friendshake-facebooks-
new-m...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/24/friendshake-facebooks-new-mobile-
feature-for-finding-people-nearby-and-a-highlight-killer/)

------
starship
Uh-oh, lookout, it's a Highlight killer! Just like how facebook killed
foursquare (fb check-ins), quora (fb questions), Craigslist (fb marketplace),
and whatever it is they were trying to kill with fb credits, now they're
coming for Highlight.

Might as well give up now, Highlight. You're doomed.

~~~
thatusertwo
Does Highlight require a Facebook account?

~~~
allardschip
It does...

------
kmfrk
Hate to be that guy, but can someone mirror or copy-pasta the post to people
without a Facebook account?

~~~
middus
Screenshot would do, too.

It would be nice if not only paywalled but also login-only resources were
frowned upon on HN.

~~~
relix
What would you suggest? A screenshot of the resource would be even less
accessible for the majority because like it or not, I'm sure 90% of HN users
do use Facebook.

This is a major feature that deserves a place on HN frontpage (especially
compared to some other recent posts) and shouldn't be ignored just because
it's behind a login screen.

~~~
nitid_name
Browsing from work? Browsing from an anon'd browser?

Even if we assume your 90% figure isn't like 68% of statistics (made up on the
spot), there are still other reasons why a screenshot might be more
appropriate.

------
allardschip
Facebook has taken their app offline:
[http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/06/facebook-quietly-
rele...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/06/facebook-quietly-releases-
find-friends-nearby-then-quietly-pulls-it/)

In the mean time, a company called FriendThem announced they are contemplating
legal action against Facebook because they feel their idea was stolen:
[http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/25/friendthem-sues-
facebook-c...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/25/friendthem-sues-facebook-
court-public-opinion/)

Which made me think this idea is too simple to sue each other over. I wrote a
clone in about half a day yesterday (the link above). For those interested in
the technology, it's made with Python, Bottle.py, Gevent, MongoDB,
CoffeeScript and JQuery Mobile. Code is here:
<https://github.com/allards/connectnearby>

A live version is here <http://connect.othercircles.com>

The app would be much more useful if you could connect on Linkedin, Twitter or
with a vcard as well. NFC would be perfect for this. What do you think?

------
peter_l_downs
For finding people who _aren't_ nearby, I recently built Who Will I Know There
[1]. Using facebook's search tools to filter friends by location was a huge
pain in the ass; this is better.

[1] <http://wwikt-peterldowns.dotcloud.com/>

~~~
kmfrk
This is a really great project. You should totally promote that as much as
possible.

It may be one of my extensions blocking it, but it should be more clear that
this uses Facebook. If they allow, maybe include a Facebook "F" in the submit
button.

~~~
peter_l_downs
Thanks for the feedback! Glad someone liked it :) You're right that it should
be more clear that this depends on Facebook — I'll take a look at that.

------
joshaidan
Is this something Facebook made, or a user created app?

~~~
kjhughes
Ryan Patterson, an engineer at Facebook, "built Find Friends Nearby with
another engineer for a hackathon project." See his comment on the Techcrunch
article on it:

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/24/friendshake-facebooks-
new-m...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/24/friendshake-facebooks-new-mobile-
feature-for-finding-people-nearby-and-a-highlight-killer/)

------
djb_hackernews
Nice. I similarly built streetbooking.com (which I think is broken because of
some api changes) for the same reason. This sort of thing comes in handy when
you meet people for the first time with common names. Good luck finding them
through the native people search.

------
derrida
So happy I quit, now I don't feel like my life is under surveillance. They are
a surveillance company.

~~~
dag11
Uhh, did you read the page? It says:

    
    
      People who appear above are nearby and have this page open.
    

This isn't a constant list of whoever is nearby. It's a list of nearby users
who _have this page open_. It's intended for two people to be able to easily
friend each other when out in public. They just take out their phones, go to
this page, and click on the user.

~~~
derrida
I was talking about Facebook. Have they stopped allowing people to post
pictures of me without my consent?

~~~
johneth
They allow you to screen any tags of you before they're made public (e.g.
Someone tagged you in a photo, allow or deny?) - this only covers whether or
not a tag of you appears with the photo (or check in).

Unfortunately, Facebook can't stop people from uploading a photo containing
you (but neither can Flickr, or Photobucket, or imgur, or any other photo
sharing website or service).

~~~
derrida
I don't know what "234*527" is off the top of my head, but I know what the
answer is if I need it. Imgur doesn't know who I am in a picture and wouldn't
know the answer if they needed it (except for a massive & deliberate effort).
Facebook, knowing my social graph, and knowing there is an untagged face in a
picture, it is a trivial programming problem.

This is why I prefer privacy-by-design rather than privacy-by-policy, and why
I think cryptography is awesome: I want to make these problems arbitrarily
hard. :-)

