Facebook users in the U.S. will soon be able to see which of their friends are in close proximity using a new feature the company is launching on Thursday, according to AP. Called "Nearby Friends," the optional tool will only be available to people who choose to turn it on. The feature uses your smartphone's GPS system to tell your Facebook friends you are nearby - provided they have the feature turned on. Rather than share your exact location, it will only show that you are nearby, say, within half a mile. If you like, you can manually share a more precise location with a specific friend you'd like to meet up with. Friends can see where you're located in a particular park, airport or city block. By default, your exact location will only be shared for an hour, although you can change this. The Nearby Friends feature will be turned off by default, so people shouldn't expect to broadcast their location unknowingly to their Facebook friends and acquaintances. It also won't be available to users under 18, said Andrea Vaccari, product manager at Facebook who has been working on Nearby Friends for the past two years. He says the tool "makes it easy to join your friends in the real world." If you want to. The feature has a lot of built-in precautions. Facebook, whose motto has long been "move fast and break things," is trying a different approach with Nearby Friends as it tries to avoid privacy fiascos that often bubble up when it makes changes to its service. The new motto, "ship love," is evident in the deliberate, cautious rollout of Nearby Friends, says Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum, an industry-backed think tank in Washington who's advised Facebook on privacy issues - including the latest feature. -- SPA 20:41 LOCAL TIME 17:41 GMT تغريد
