Facebook Messenger wants to be an offline social gathering tool, not just an online chat app. Today it’s adding a new Live Location feature that lets you..
Facebook Messenger wants to be an offline social gathering tool, not just an online chat app. Today it’s adding a new Live Location feature that lets you share for an hour within a private direct or group message thread your real-time location on a map. The recipients can then see an estimate of how long it would take you to reach them by car.
“Live Location is super helpful when trying to coordinate with friends, telling people how close you are when you’re on your way to an appointment or even sharing where you are with your roommate when you’re on your way home at night,” writes the feature’s product manager Selena Wang. It’s rolling out for all iOS and Android Messenger users today. Messenger could now challenge location apps like Foursquare Swarm and meetup apps like Down To Lunch.
Live Location is Facebook’s second big attempt at maps in Messenger after its first one blew up into a privacy scandal and was scrapped in 2015. Many users were sharing their momentary exact location with each message, which a Harvard student found could be scraped into a Marauder’s Map through a Chrome extension he built showing exactly where a friend had been. Facebook rescinded the student’s internship offer , made him take the extension down and switched to only letting users send their one-time current or future location.
