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Facebook tests Snapchat-like map for Nearby Friends
Facebook's eagerness to replicate Snapchat features might extend beyond particularly conspicuous elements like Stories and selfie filters. The company has confirmed to TechCrunch that it's testing a rework of Nearby Friends that introduces visuals uncannily like Snapchat's Snap Map. While the conventional list is still there, testers can see friends grouped by city and neighborhood. You'd have a better sense of whether or not a friend is town without having to read a sea of text.
Facebook won't flag your friends on a map anymore
Facebook is making some significant changes to its Nearby Friends feature that lets you see where pals are, Techcrunch has noticed. Most significantly, it has eliminated the precise tracking feature that tells you exactly where friends are by pinpointing them on a map. Now, you can only see them in a list along with an approximate distance away. While the original feature made it easy to check someone's progress or tell you when they arrive, for instance, it's also a bit of a privacy nightmare if you forget to turn it off.
Facebook's Nearby Friends feature keeps track of your pals, but only if they want you to
If you're of the sort that likes to plan those otherwise impromptu encounters, Facebook has just announced a optional new feature that will certainly help with that. Nearby Friends will show you if your friends are close by, so you can reach out about meeting up. This isn't automatically turn on inside Facebook's apps though, as you'll have to toggle it on and your friends will have to decide to share their location for it to work. However, there's the ability to broadcast coordinates for a certain amount of time -- the hour or two that you plan to be at your favorite bar, for example. You can also see when folks that have opted-in are traveling, giving you the opportunity to send any ramen or burrito recommendations their way. As you might expect, the feature will beam push notifications to your mobile device to alert you when your best mate is nearby. This news is certainly interesting in the context of the outfit's push for its own location services, along with recent news of Instagram testing the in-house Places for tagging photos. While there's no official arrival date, Nearby Friends is rolling out to both Android and iOS in the weeks to come.
Foursquare update restores nearby checkins
Foursquare angered some of its users when a June update stripped away the nearby friends feature. This group complained loud enough and long enough that foursquare decided to restore the feature in its latest update, which hit the iOS App Store on Thursday. The update lets you switch between an all activity view that shows everyone's check-ins and a nearby friends view that shows the activity of friends who are close by. Besides nearby friends, the foursquare app also includes a handful of bug fixes and tweaks to improve performance. The updated version of foursquare is now available in the iOS App Store.
