'Find Friends Nearby' would find Facebook users close to your location (left). But the feature disappeared from the app soon after being released (right). Image: Facebook
Facebook seemed to be taking a step in the location-based app direction with the launch of Find Friends Nearby. But only hours after releasing the new — yet very unofficial — feature, the company reeled it back in, pulling it from its iOS and Android apps, and disabling the mobile page.
The new feature initially gave Facebook users a landing page on which to find other users who were within a certain vicinity. It was yet another move indicating Facebook’s commitment to broadening its mobile experience.
In the middle of testing out the Find Friends Nearby feature, however, I noticed that the mobile page no longer worked. It only loaded to a blank page. And when I went back to access the feature within the app, the Find Friends Nearby option mysteriously disappeared.
When contacted, a Facebook spokesperson told Wired: “This wasn’t a formal release — this was just 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, but we’ll communicate to everyone when there is something to say.”
The feature definitely felt like a test.
For one, Find Friends Nearby wasn’t anything fancy — the feature didn’t get any special launch announcements, and even when it was available, it was well-hidden within Facebook’s iOS and Android apps.
Find Friends Nearby was born out of a hackathon, the all-night coding events championed by the company. Facebook software engineer Ryan Patterson created the feature and initially launched it as Friendshake, according to a comment Patterson wrote on a TechCrunch story.
Patterson said that the feature was meant to help you connect with people you’ve just met while you’re out at an event, not necessarily find new people, as you would in an app like Highlight.
Instead of having to perform a Facebook search for your new friends’ names — and going through the hassle of asking “Is this John Smith you? What about this one?” — you could all just open up the Find Friends Nearby page and quickly add everyone.
According to Patterson’s comment, the app used your phone’s GPS coordinates to determine your location, and would turn off as soon as you left the Find Friends Nearby page. It didn’t do much else. Unlike beefier location-based apps, Find Friends Nearby didn’t try to help you discover new people with shared interests, common ties, or mutual friends.
When the feature was live, you could access it by going to the iOS or Android Facebook app’s menu bar. Under the Apps section you’d tap Find Friends, then Other Tools. At the bottom you saw an option to Find Friends Nearby; tap that that it would open a page that showed you a list of users who are close by. You could also get to Find Friends Nearby through a mobile browser by logging into Facebook and going to the feature’s URL (fb.com/ffn).
All of that is no longer available.
But that doesn’t mean Facebook won’t build the feature out at a later date. The company acquired Glancee, an app that aimed to “make it easy to discover the hidden connections around you, and meet interesting people,” back in May. Now that it’s folded into Facebook, it’s not hard to imagine Facebook integrating deeper location-based and people-discovery services into its own app.
When Facebook decides to relaunch Find Friends Nearby — potentially with deeper features — it will need to be careful. Location-based apps tend to get flack for being creepy. And a giant social network company that has already suffered privacy blows will need to be extra sensitive as not to upset its users.
And in the future, maybe Facebook engineers should keep its tests internal? In any case, it looks like we all got excited about a half-baked feature. Here’s to hoping that Facebook releases a fully baked version of Find Friends Nearby soon.
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