The Facebook app is seemingly getting updated with a City Guides feature as some users are reporting that they’re starting to see a new functionality that suggests events and places users might be interested in attending and visiting. Apart from making suggestions, the City Guides feature also lists your Facebook friends who have previously said they’re attending a certain event or visiting a particular city you’re currently inspecting on Facebook. That functionality was presumably implemented so that users have an easier time of finding some company for their upcoming trip.
Overall, the new feature seems to be working in a manner that’s similar to FourSquare, except that it’s integrated directly into Facebook and is apparently offering proactive suggestions. In other words, if you’re searching for information about a particular city on Facebook, you can expect to see the City Guide feature pop up to help you pick your destination. Alternatively, it’s also possible that Facebook will use your location to detect when you’re visiting a particular city and offer to help you navigate it and find interesting locations to visit and events to attend. Facebook has reportedly been testing the City Guides feature for a while but has yet to roll it out worldwide. It’s unclear whether the fact that the functionality is now appearing to more users means the global rollout has finally started but more information on the matter will likely be available shortly.
Naturally, the concept on which the City Guides feature is based on is hardly new as there are many similar apps that offer to help you navigate a particular city and find interesting landmarks and locations to visit. However, Facebook is the largest social media service on the planet that’s already a huge part of our lives, meaning the Menlo Park-based company already has a suitable platform for launching its new service and quickly getting hundreds of millions of people to use it. The social media giant will likely officially announce the City Guides feature shortly. In the meantime, you can check out how this functionality works in action by referring to the gallery below.
