Facebook makes it easier to find
friends
Facebook
has silently released a new feature that allows mobile users to find friends
who are geographically nearby. Dubbed as “Friendshake”, the new Facebook
feature is available through a URL - http://fb.com/ffn
– an abbreviation of Find Friends Nearby. FFN lets users locate friends and
potential friends in vicinity without having to search for them by name. Users,
however, need to log into Facebook to use the FFN platform.
According
to TechCrunch,
the new feature, yet to be announced officially, is available on Facebook's
iOS and Android apps, besides being accessible via Facebook's mobile site.
TechCrunch quotes Facebook engineer Ryan Patterson as saying that he had
developed the feature along with fellow engineer for a hackathon project.
“I
built Find Friends Nearby with another engineer for a hackathon project. While
it was originally called ‘Friendshake’, we settled on ‘Find Friends Nearby’ for
launch (the URL was a little bit of a homage to the previous iteration),” he
said.
Facebook's
new FFN feature has once again triggered debate over privacy
issues. VentureBeat in its report says the new feature may speed up
process of finding friends in vicinity, but then it also “poses privacy risk”.
“If
you simply leave the mobile app open on that page or open your web browser, you
can see anyone else nearby who accesses the page. Just sitting here at my
computer, I’ve already stumbled across a few guys who apparently live very
close to my address, and chances are they saw me too,”
Reports
on the web suggest the new FFN feature has something to do with Facebook's
recent acquisition of Glancee app, a location-based, "social
discovery" app designed to connect users with friends. TechCrunch in its
report had also pointed out the popularity of Highlight, another
social-discovery application.
Facebook
has of late shifted its attention towards mobile users in a bid to up its
revenue and woo new investors. The social networking giant is reportedly
working on real-time mobile ads based on users' location.
