A new Facebook mobile feature for Android and iOS called Find Friends Nearby allows you to see a list of the names of the people within a given radius, with links to their Facebook pages.
Facebook engineer Ryan Patterson designed the app chiefly for easier exchanging of contact information. Initially dubbed as Friendshake, the developer probably thinks of it as a virtual handshake—you meet someone new, and then when you decide to exchange contact details, you could just open your Facebook apps and use the feature to add each other up. No search required.
While we do realize that this feature can possibly be handy for easy networking, it does raise a lot of questions regarding security. For one thing, stalking just got easier. You easily have access to some information on the people within the vicinity. That can be dangerous if you’re on the “stalked” end, but luckily, phones will only detect those who are using the feature as well. So if you’re hiding from an assassin, you don’t have to worry unless you both have the feature running at the same time.
The Find Friends Nearby feature can be accessed by visiting http://fb.com/ffn on your mobile browser and by going to Menu>Apps>Find Friends>Other Tools. You will see the Find Friends Nearby option at the bottom.
If you’re curious about how it looks and actually works, here’s a short video from Mashable:
Image Source: here.
[UPDATE] SlashGear reports that Facebook has just pulled the plug on Find Friends Nearby.