Facebook kills off exact location sharing in Nearby Friends, adds Wave

Nearby Friends didn’t turn into the Foursquare-killer it could have been, but Facebook is still trying to help people meet up in person…with a few changes. Facebook has removed the precise location sharing feature from Nearby Friends, which now only lets you opt-in to broadcasting your approximate distance from friends and current neighborhood.

Previously, you could select to temporarily or permanently share your constant exact pinpoint on a map with specific friends, or request this from a friend. This was useful for meeting up with someone on the move, knowing when someone was arriving, or frighteningly, stalking your significant other.

Facebook Nearby Friends’ old map and precise location sharing feature have bene removed.

But it also lent an air of creepiness to a product that is relatively privacy-safe for a location sharing service, since users fully control who sees what. And if your forgot you’d permanently shared your exact spot with someone, it could needlessly drain battery.

TechCrunch noticed the map being removed from the Nearby Friends service in the Facebook app’s More tab, and Facebook now confirms that the feature for letting people see your precise location on a map is no longer active. That strips Nearby Friends’ main visual component too, making it now just a list of people’s proximities and neighborhood.

That seems to have paved the way for a desktop version of Nearby Friends in the chat sidebar on the right. It shows a list of friends within a few miles, with their neighborhood and name. Tapping lets you send them a message to arrange a get-together. Facebook confirmed this is in testing after we spotted the addition.

Facebook is testing a Nearby Friends list in the right sidebar (magnified here in the red box)

Finally, Facebook has built a successor to the classic “Poke” feature called “Wave”. Some users have the option to send a Wave to friends they see in Facebook Nearby to let them know they’re interested in what that friend is up to. It’s a lightweight way to reach out without a full-fledged instant message, but that could lead to a conversation on Messenger about whether they’re free to hang out.

Wave addresses the core flaw of Nearby Friends — that just because someone is in your proximity, doesn’t mean they’re available. This is what plagued Foursquare too. You were never sure if you should drop in on someone down the street, since their checkin wouldn’t necessarily tell you if they were on a date or in a meeting there. Wave was pointed out by Matteo Gamba and others, and first covered by Social Times.

A Facebook spokesperson confirms that “We are testing a new feature within Nearby Friends allowing people to send their friends a waving hand emoji to say hello and help them meet up. This is meant to give people more ways to express themselves, and help friends interact with one another in new fun and lightweight ways.”