Facebook to Notify Users When Friends are Nearby
Facebook to Notify Users When Friends are Nearby
12:59 pm ET Apr 17, 2014
Facebook users will soon be able to receive notices on
their mobile app when they’re near friends, signaling an effort by the online
social network to play a bigger role in real-world interactions.
Users will have to opt in separately to the feature,
called “Nearby Friends,” and agree to give Facebook permission to track them at
all times, even when not logged into Facebook.
Facebook said it will introduce the service gradually in
coming weeks. Users of Facebook’s mobile app will get notifications prompting
them to opt in.
Some privacy advocates expressed concerns about the
implications for users of opting into the service. Chris Conley, a policy
attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, said
Facebook should keep users “regularly aware” of everyone with whom they’re
sharing location. Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital
Democracy, called on the Federal Trade Commission to review the product.
A Facebook spokeswoman said users will receive regular
reminders about Nearby Friends, and that the company regularly discusses its
products and features with the FTC and other regulators.
With the new feature, Facebook is entering an already
crowded space occupied by the likes of casual dating app Tinder and social
check-in service Foursquare. Radar, a smartphone app released last year, tells
users where their Facebook friends are. Cloak, on the other hand, uses
Foursquare and Instagram to locate friends – and help people avoid them.
Rival social network Twitter in December tested a feature
that allowed users to see tweets from nearby, whether or not the user followed
the tweeter.
Facebook briefly tested a feature similar to Nearby
Friends in June 2012, but quickly stopped after news reports of the test
surfaced. At the time, Facebook said the effort was an experiment.
This time, Facebook is hoping to do better by leveraging
its more than one billion users. Nearby Friends grew out of Facebook’s 2012
acquisition of mobile app Glancee.
Andrea Vaccari, Glancee’s former chief executive, said
developing Nearby Friends posed two technological hurdles: making sure the
Facebook app didn’t overwhelm users with too many notifications or drain the
phone’s battery.
Because Facebook users tend to be “friends” with
co-workers and family members, Vaccari didn’t want users blasted with
notifications every time someone arrived at home or the office.
Vaccari’s team developed algorithms so that Facebook
could learn about its users’ relationships and limit notifications.
Vaccari said his team also figured out how to track
users’ locations without draining the battery. “There’s no extra battery
drain,” he said.
The notices won’t disclose a user’s precise location,
only their neighborhood. Users can then choose to share their exact location
with individual friends who are nearby. Vaccari says that feature comes in
handy when meeting people in crowded places, like a concert or parade.
Vaccari said Facebook deliberated about whether to show
friends’ locations on a map, but decided against it because some users might
have viewed it as an invasion of privacy.
Facebook employees have been testing the app in recent
months, and Vaccari said it’s already had some serendipitous outcomes. On one
occasion, two employees arrived at the San Francisco airport at the same time
from different parts of the world. They learned from Nearby Friends that they
were both at the airport and the shared a cab home, saving money.
On another occasion, two Facebook employees learned they
were vacationing at the same Lake Tahoe resort, and skied together.
Vaccari said the new feature could help Facebook users
develop new relationships. He said he developed Glancee because he found
himself in new places where he knew few people. He “fell in love with the
problem” of trying to meet new friends, he said.
-Elizabeth Dwoskin and Yoree Koh contributed to this
article
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