How to use Facebook's new Find Friends Nearby app

*** Update: Facebook abruptly decided to discontinue this service asserting that it wasn’t ready to be rolled out. If it is indeed re-released in the future you’ll be ahead of the curve by reading this!***

Last week, Facebook rolled out a mobile service called Find Friends Nearby that allows you to see new friends in your immediate proximity (using your phone’s GPS). It’s an opt-in service, meaning that both parties must be using the app to see each other.

There are two ways to access Find Friends Nearby:

Through the Facebook app on iOS or Android you can follow this path (note you have to do this each time you want to use the service):

menu > apps > find friends > other tools > Find Friends Nearby

This is a bit cumbersome. The easiest way to use this is simply to type this address into your browser.

http://fb.com/ffn

Both sites look exactly the same, so you’re not missing out on any functions if you access via browser versus the Facebook app.

It will be interesting to understand how many people use this. Ingrid Lunden of Techcrunch writes that Find Friends Nearby may be a “Highlight killer.” I wrote a few weeks ago about how little traction Highlight had in Los Angeles and Seattle (I got my first Cincinnati ping on Highlight yesterday) so that may be a pretty low goal. With the augmented reality potential of Google Glasses looming, targeting Highlight is pretty short-sighted.

But if Facebook makes it easier to use the function (keeping it running in the background or available with one prompt), it will probably eclipse Highlight just because of the comparable scale of Facebook’s mobile app. It has the potential to be a pretty helpful tool for social butterflies on Facebook with a few tweaks. I also would recommend tweaking your privacy settings before using an app like this, so that people around you aren’t privy to anything too revealing.

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Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is “social media research,” I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred’s 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout’s most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven’t entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.