During this evening, the Facebook company launched a new function for its social network, a function called Find Friends Nearby. she was developed during a hackathon that took place at Facebook, it was initially called Friendshake, but in the end it ended up being available on iOS and Android OS under the name Find Friends Nearby. Practically this function, which you can find in the application in the menu Apps>Find Friends>Other Tools>Find Friends Nearby, allows you to use the application and GPS to locate friends who are in your vicinity. Of course, it is necessary for your friends to have the Facebook application installed, the GPS active and to be logged into the Find Friends Nearby platform, otherwise everything is completely useless.
The entire functionality of Find Friends Nearby is similar to that offered by Apple through the Find My Friends application, only that in the case of those from Facebook it is more complicated to use the entire platform. I'm not surprised that Facebook offers such options now, but the idea of launching this function was to give users the opportunity to strengthen relationships with friends from their own list, or to make new friends based on contacts on Facebook. Regardless of the purpose of using Find Friends Nearby, the function can be accessed right now through the Facebook application in iOS.
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 an homage to the previous iteration). For me, the ideal use case for this product is the one where 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.
