We're happy to chat up our Facebook friends on the web, but empowering them to track us down in person makes that virtual social experience feel a bit too real. Perhaps that was the reasoning behind the mysterious disappearance of the company's new Find Friends Nearby feature, which bit the dust yesterday just as quickly as it first appeared. During its hours-long tenure, the new tracking tab didn't give precise friend location information, but did provide a list of buddies in an undisclosed vicinity, making it possible for some not-so-top-tier contacts to realize that you're still in Tulsa, and didn't actually make that move to Timbuktu. Whatever the reason, Find Friends Nearby is now very much lost, but it could theoretically make its return at any point in the future. For now, you'll need to return to keeping an eye on acquaintances the old-fashioned way.

Facebook's Find Friends Nearby feature falls off the map, leaves buddy locating to other social apps originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A mobile Facebook feature called Find Friends Nearby, previously code-named Friendshake, is coming out of development and will soon be on its way to your iOS or Android phone. Perhaps springing from the social network's acquisition of ambient social app Glancee, it's still fairly primitive, merely navigating to a browser page on your device, where it will show you a list of other users within a given, undisclosed radius. Presumably, the benefit is to let you quickly add someone in your purview like Find my Friends, although we're interested to see what privacy settings are on offer. You never know, Mr. Zuckerberg could be tempting the privacy gods -- and governments -- once again.

Facebook's Find Friends Nearby: GPS lets you give nearby mobile users a Friendshake originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 07:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.