Facebook’s new Find Friends Nearby feature now available in official iOS app [Update: Pulled]

Facebook recently announced a new feature called “Find Friends Nearby” that allows users to add people to their Facebook friends list that are located nearby to their current location. This feature is now available and ready to be used in Facebook’s official iOS app. Find Friends Nearby requires both users to open the FFN page from their app in order to see each other (detail below). FFN feature is useful when you meet a new person and want to add him or her to your Facebook account. This feature has been introduced to facilitate users and make it easier for people to add each other on the social networking website.

Read the update below.

For those of you who are thinking that this service is a competitor to Apple’s Find My Friends service, that allows users to locate their friends on maps, you are wrong. It only allows users to add people that are not currently on your friends list and it does not shows the current location of the person you are trying to add on the map.

To access the Facebook Find Friends Nearby feature on your iOS device, simply launch the official Facebook app, then go to Menu > Apps > Find Friends > Other Tools > Find Friends Nearby. On desktop or on mobile Safari you can open http://fb.com/ffn.

Facebook engineer who is behind Find Friends Nearby told TechCrunch:

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).
For me, the ideal use case for this product is the one where when you’re out with a group of people whom you’ve recently met and want to stay in contact with. Facebook search might be effective, or sharing your vanity addresses or business cards, but this tool provides a really easy way to exchange contact information with multiple people with minimal friction.

Find Friends Nearby is a nice addition to already feature filled Facebook app and super useful for those who like to add new friends on their Facebook during parties and social events.

Update: Facebook has pulled the new Find Friends Nearby features and has issued the following statement to ABCNews. [via]

“This wasn’t a formal release — this was something that a few engineers were testing. With all tests, some get released as full products, others don’t. Nothing more to say on this for now — we’ll communicate to everyone when there is something to say.”

[TechCrunch]

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Tagged as:Apps, facebook, features, FFN, Find Friends Nearby, iOS apps, location services, news