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Hands On With Facebook Nearby Friends [Video]: No More Checkins

Facebook Nearby Friends is based around broadcasting how far you are from friends, not your exact coordinates, and that’s why it could succeed where other location apps have failed. But while we might be comfortable sharing proximity, that doesn’t mean we’re comfortable doing it on Facebook.

With services like Google Latitude, it feels a bit creepy letting anyone see where you are all the time, even your closest friends. Occasionally checking in on apps like Foursquare can make you feel exposed too if you share that information widely. Plus just because someone is at a cafe down the street doesn’t mean they want to see you. They could be in a work meeting or on a date. In the end, your exact location is actually irrelevant to most people.

What really matters is if you’re close enough that it’d be convenient to meet up. That’s what Facebook Nearby Friends is about. If you are, you can communicate to see if you’re both interested in hanging out and then potentially share your exact locations. Until then, exact location is more creepy than helpful. ...

Where Nearby Friends gets more clunky is when you decide to share your precise location with someone. The compass icon buttons that trigger this aren’t very intuitive. The little expiration slider works fine, but the 40 character messages you can send with your location are sometimes too long to fit in notifications or the map view. For safety, it’d be nice if Facebook sent a periodic reminder alert if you don’t set your real-time location to expire from someone’s view so you don’t leave it on forever.

The more conservative, opt-in approach was wise for Facebook as forcing Nearby Friends on people could have caused extremely heavy backlash.

Read the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/20/how-does-facebook-nearby-friends-work/?ncid=tcdaily