

Facebook launches Nearby Friends - andreavaccari
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/04/introducing-a-new-optional-feature-called-nearby-friends/

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bronbron
While this seems like a really cool idea, I have a feeling that this is the
sort of feature that everyone will enable at first, and then one single bad
event will cause them to disable it forever.

I'm sure everyone has told a "white lie" at some point (e.g. "Sorry, I can't
really hang out tonight because I'm not feeling well" == "I want to go see a
movie by myself"), and anything that might hinder your ability to do that is
likely to be disabled permanently the first time it causes an issue (or even
in anticipation of it causing an issue).

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debt
It's weird because they've had a feature similar to this before. It was under
a tab called "Nearby" or something in their left navigation. If I remember
correctly it was web only but a user could access it on their phones through
the mobile site. I liked it. It wasn't as one-to-one as this iteration of it
though. It would only show you where someone recently checked-in. It was quite
accurate though.

It eventually just went away. I wonder why they got rid of that, but now are
doing something like this.

~~~
gedrap
I remember this feature. I also remember that hardly anyone of my friends used
checking in so it was fairly useless :)

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mmxiii
While most posts are touching on privacy or failure cases, I am still
struggling to understand this product from a social perspective. First of all,
this general idea has been floating around since companies like loopt, when
mobile started taking off. I remember working through the use case
considerations for this kind of product, and that's where it really dies.

This breed of product is based on the idea that location = event. If someone
is at a location, that means something is going on. But it ignores massive
implicit social constructs: 1. Facebook friends are not real friends (Circles
is slightly better but classification is onerous), 2. Someone you don't know
well is unlikely to share their location to you, and less likely to agree to
hang out based on location, in contrast someone you do know well, you will
easily be aware of their location and availability.

The reality is that this product captures one piece of information - where is
my friend right now. But on any serious reflection, you should be able to
discern that this piece of information is incredibly secondary to the nature
of the actual relationship when determining whether or not to hang out.

~~~
npizzolato
One place I can see this being useful is at music festivals or other large
open-area events. Often you're going with other people, but you're not
necessarily going to stick together the entire time. Being able to find each
other easily would be a nice improvement, as phone-tag is a pretty terrible
way to do it.

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nlh
I can see both sides of this coin. On the one hand, the positive use case is
actually pretty helpful -- I _would_ like to know if I'm at a bar and, for
example, some friends are in the back that I might have otherwise missed.

But on the flipside, this has the potential to turn a lot of social situations
slightly sticky -- I immediately think back to a friend's "worst date ever"
story where she was asked out by a guy who later cancelled because "work stuff
came up". And then she ran into him, drunk, with his buddies, at the same bar.

At least before FB he could have hidden under a table! ;)

~~~
zippergz
It might be interesting if they could add some kind of geofencing feature to
it. So you could have it automatically be enabled when you're hanging out at
the bar you go to when you want to see friends, but be disabled otherwise.
It's good that they let you turn it on and off whenever you want, but having
to do so manually seems like a chore that will cause me to just leave it off
all the time.

~~~
gedrap
Creating a whitelist sounds a bit tedious. Because it might look fun at first,
you would add a few places, but then forget it forever, don't update them and
the feature would slowly die.

Blacklist makes more sense. E.g. I don't want people to know where exactly do
I live. Or automatic disabling at specific dates, e.g. during the weekend.

~~~
zippergz
Yeah, good point.

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Hovertruck
Will this be smart enough to not tell me every time my friends who live next
door to me are nearby?

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hanley
I can imagine sitting at a bar with friends and getting notifications on my
phone that they are nearby.

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SubZero
Geolocation features aside, I'm more impressed by the fact that Facebook has
created something that's opt-in rather than volunteering people right off the
bat.

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fossuser
I remember google latitude had this feature years ago and I thought it was
really cool, but they killed it because people complained about it.

I thought it was neat to be out at some family event or the mall etc. and get
notices that your friends were nearby.

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RossM
It's still there in Google+, under locations.

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fossuser
Maybe I remember them switching it from opt-out to opt-in then? Did that ever
happen?

I kind of wish it was opt-out by default, but I know that would probably cause
a huge controversy. People are already collecting your location data anyway -
might as well use it with your friends/people you'd actually want to have it.

~~~
RossM
Yeah I think that happened around the time they started sharing data between
products. It's hella useful when it comes down to it (and you can be quite
restrictive with your location in G+).

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matthodan
I created a similar service a while back at
[http://www.nearbyfriends.com](http://www.nearbyfriends.com). Here is a video
describing the launch: [http://vimeo.com/15039067](http://vimeo.com/15039067).
I later added proximity alerts so you could see when your Facebook friends
check in near you. Funny to see Facebook launch a similar "Nearby Friends"
three years later.

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obiefernandez
I live in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, about 30 miles from the center. I
have a local group of friends that I get together with on a weekly basis. But
this feature seems like it might help me see my city-based friends on a more
regular basis. Times that I drive into the city, or fly to other metro areas
for conferences and meetings, I'd love to know if I have FB friends nearby to
meet up with.

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dougcorrea
What about automatically chatting with ANYONE nearby you that is using the app
and "available" for chat?

I think this will be a good idea.

Imagine you in traffic, and launch the app to chat with the driver in the car
side yours... The same could works when you go to party and don't try to find
somebody "available" there....

This, for Facebook, should be easy, right?

~~~
rosem
Spott (
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spott/id591300005](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spott/id591300005)
) is exactly what you're talking about.

It's basically nearby _anyone_ , with the connection being a location instead
of a phone number, email, username, etc... They have done a good job at
keeping the content focused on useful information, rather than dick pics.

The downside is it really only has a strong user-base in Chicago.

~~~
dougcorrea
Great app! And really nice job with useful information instead of simple chat.

After remember that Twitter have already an "location flag" when you tweet
from mobile, I did a search for something that use it, and found it:
[http://nearbytweets.com/](http://nearbytweets.com/)

It seems that this is the same idea with Twitter users...that is also
interesting

~~~
rosem
Thanks! We're working on Twitter integration with our next release (1.2.2).
Twitter's streaming API opens up a lot of cool new features for us to add.

~~~
dougcorrea
do you are from Spott team? Great!

I think improve it with twitter integration will be great. And, maybe, let an
optional "public chat" (without images and with flood control) maybe let it
more 'popular'

if you want to discuss more feedback feel free to found me on me at
dougcorrea.com

:)

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matznerd
The problem with this type of integration in such a widespread app is that it
can become problematic to explain to someone, like a significant other, why
you would have a need to not share your location with them. It can be
difficult to counter the "what do you have to hide" line of reasoning.

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xiata
Not bad, I think this will end games of phone tag where people mention vague
landmarks for friends at large events.

Due to Facebook's usage, I think this will take off. No need to convince
friends unsuccessfully to install another app.

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ecesena
Eventually Glancee [1] see the light! Congrats guys ;)

[1] [http://www.glancee.com](http://www.glancee.com)

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ausjke
Tencent's QQ and Wechat IM services have been doing this for a long while,
both are very popular. Nice catch up FB.

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pain_perdu
The folks who recently poured millions into connect.com are NOT going to be
happy about this.

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huhtenberg
Not really related, but does anyone know why newsroom.fb.com is running on
WordPress?

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sebastianavina
because they don't want to reinvent the wheel?

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jackmaney
I would prefer that my nearby friends not be launched anywhere.

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chatman
An invasion on privacy for those people whom FB can trick into activating the
feature.

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suyash
Haha, there goes your privacy to Facebook's advertisers.

