from Hacker News

Facebook Find Friends Nearby

by pdufour on 6/25/12, 12:07 AM with 28 comments

  • by CWIZO on 6/25/12, 7:06 AM

    Great, another way for FB to show people I don't know down my throat.

    I really don't get it. What does FB have to gain from me friending a million users? I thought the point is to build meaningful connections with people I actually know. But the way they are handling things is just stupid. The "people you may know" widget on their page (web&mobile) has never ever suggested a person I actually knew. Just some random friends of my friends that I've just friended, or sometimes not even that. Can anybody shed some light on this?

  • by Sami_Lehtinen on 6/25/12, 5:17 AM

    I personally think that it really sucks to post links that require registration. It's just like those links "free what ever" and then they ask for tons of personal details. No, it isn't free at all. This is something I have commented several times in LinkedIn. It's promotion & data-grabbing, it isn't public or free. So in this case, I would give -10 points to this link.

    Eh, it's actually just like free stuff they mail you, you only pay $29 for handing and posting costs.

    Here is an article about that feature that you can read without registration: http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/24/friendshake-facebooks-new-m...

  • by starship on 6/25/12, 4:08 AM

    Uh-oh, lookout, it's a Highlight killer! Just like how facebook killed foursquare (fb check-ins), quora (fb questions), Craigslist (fb marketplace), and whatever it is they were trying to kill with fb credits, now they're coming for Highlight.

    Might as well give up now, Highlight. You're doomed.

  • by kmfrk on 6/25/12, 12:07 PM

    Hate to be that guy, but can someone mirror or copy-pasta the post to people without a Facebook account?

  • by allardschip on 6/27/12, 7:24 PM

    Facebook has taken their app offline: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/06/facebook-quietly-rele...

    In the mean time, a company called FriendThem announced they are contemplating legal action against Facebook because they feel their idea was stolen: http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/25/friendthem-sues-facebook-c...

    Which made me think this idea is too simple to sue each other over. I wrote a clone in about half a day yesterday (the link above). For those interested in the technology, it's made with Python, Bottle.py, Gevent, MongoDB, CoffeeScript and JQuery Mobile. Code is here: https://github.com/allards/connectnearby

    A live version is here http://connect.othercircles.com

    The app would be much more useful if you could connect on Linkedin, Twitter or with a vcard as well. NFC would be perfect for this. What do you think?

  • by peter_l_downs on 6/25/12, 3:47 AM

    For finding people who aren't nearby, I recently built Who Will I Know There [1]. Using facebook's search tools to filter friends by location was a huge pain in the ass; this is better.

    [1] http://wwikt-peterldowns.dotcloud.com/

  • by joshaidan on 6/25/12, 3:57 AM

    Is this something Facebook made, or a user created app?

  • by djb_hackernews on 6/25/12, 1:06 AM

    Nice. I similarly built streetbooking.com (which I think is broken because of some api changes) for the same reason. This sort of thing comes in handy when you meet people for the first time with common names. Good luck finding them through the native people search.

  • by derrida on 6/25/12, 7:25 AM

    So happy I quit, now I don't feel like my life is under surveillance. They are a surveillance company.