Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) does not have a history of being reluctant to permit friends to view your location. Earlier the majority of Facebook friends could only view the city and state from where the message was sent from. To send their location to a Facebook friend, they manually entered the address or switched to a separate app to send places on a map typically using text.
While chatting if you have location enabled the person chatting with you can simply tap on any message to see your location at the time the message was dispatched. Facebook is making sharing of location with friends, family and peers simpler. Messenger will have a new feature that will allow sharing locations within the chat. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your present location. You can share a meeting venue at a film festival or the food court where you are having lunch with an acquaintance. As per Facebook, this will take the place of the old location feature.
You will have complete control regarding the time and method of sharing location information. A location is sent only if you tap the location pin and opt to dispatch it as a separate message. There is the facility to share locations such as a meeting venue even in the case of you not being present there.
In the updated version of Messenger, a little location pin symbol is placed at the bottom right-hand side of the screen. By clicking on it, a window will appear through which users can dispatch their present location or an alternative “pinned” location on a map courtesy Nokia Corporation (ADR)(NYSE:NOK) Here for android and Apple Inc.(NASDAQ:AAPL) Maps on iOS.
The announcement was made a week subsequent to a Facebook intern developing a Chrome extension known as Marauders Map. The extension extracted and compiled location info from certain Messenger users and pinpointed their position on a virtual map.
Facebook reassured users regarding permissions or pinging for your location. Messenger doesn’t obtain location info from your device in the background. That info is sent only if you choose a location and tap “Send” in the Messenger app. You have the liberty of disabling location completely at any point in time.
Sources: theverge, mashable
