Facebook launches Nearby Friends

I remember google latitude had this feature years ago and I thought it was really cool, but they killed it because people complained about it.

I thought it was neat to be out at some family event or the mall etc. and get notices that your friends were nearby.

I can see both sides of this coin. On the one hand, the positive use case is actually pretty helpful -- I _would_ like to know if I'm at a bar and, for example, some friends are in the back that I might have otherwise missed.

But on the flipside, this has the potential to turn a lot of social situations slightly sticky -- I immediately think back to a friend's "worst date ever" story where she was asked out by a guy who later cancelled because "work stuff came up". And then she ran into him, drunk, with his buddies, at the same bar.

At least before FB he could have hidden under a table! ;)

An invasion on privacy for those people whom FB can trick into activating the feature.

While this seems like a really cool idea, I have a feeling that this is the sort of feature that everyone will enable at first, and then one single bad event will cause them to disable it forever.

I'm sure everyone has told a "white lie" at some point (e.g. "Sorry, I can't really hang out tonight because I'm not feeling well" == "I want to go see a movie by myself"), and anything that might hinder your ability to do that is likely to be disabled permanently the first time it causes an issue (or even in anticipation of it causing an issue).

I remember I used to get notifications when people checked into places near me on Facebook.