After years of trying to market exact coordinate check-ins to the public, Facebook and Foursquare are turning their attention to ambient proximity, Techcrunch reports. Facebook launched its “Nearby Friends” feed earlier this month and Foursquare has announced its new app, “Swarm.” Both apps employ ambient proximity, which involves sharing your approximate location with close friends automatically, instead of making the conscious decision to post your arrival at an exact location. Ambient proximity’s appeal is in the fact that users are not required to follow their friends’ every move to know whether or not a spontaneous meeting is possible. Foursquare and Facebook’s ‘Places’ app relied upon check-ins and ambient location sharing that has really never caught on with the public. Despite being the biggest name in the location sharing game, Foursquare only has about 45 million active members, at least as of December 2013.

1. Facebook and Foursquare Launch
Ambient Proximity Apps
After years of trying to market exact
coordinate check-ins to the public,
Facebook and Foursquare are turning
their attention to ambient proximity,
Techcrunch reports. Facebook launched
its “Nearby Friends” feed earlier this
month and Foursquare has announced
its new app, “Swarm.” Both apps employ
ambient proximity, which involves
sharing your approximate location with
close friends automatically, instead of
making the conscious decision to post
your arrival at an exact location.

2. Ambient proximity’s appeal is in the fact
that users are not required to follow their
friends’ every move to know whether or
not a spontaneous meeting is possible.
Foursquare and Facebook’s ‘Places’
app relied upon check-ins and ambient
location sharing that has really never
caught on with the public. Despite being
the biggest name in the location sharing
game, Foursquare only has about 45
million active members, at least as of
December 2013.

3. The problem with exact location tracking
is that it feels voyeuristic. Knowing the
exact location of your friends becomes
unnecessary unless they are close
enough for you to join them. Location
tagging in Facebook became useful for
photo and status tagging, but not for
arranging actual meetings with friends.
Similarly, Foursquare has become best
suited for users looking to discover new
local establishments, not spontaneous
meetups.

4. The logical problems with check-ins and
ambient location are now apparent.
Knowing exactly where someone is
does not let you know exactly what that
person is doing or whether they wish to
be disturbed. They would still need to be
contacted to see if it is convenient to
meet up, which would nullify the value of
knowing where they are in the first
place. Because ambient proximity
focuses on how physically close
someone is to you, as opposed to their
exact location, it may remove some of
the feelings of voyeurism from the
exchange. And because it is automatic
and tied to only certain individuals, the
assumption would be that the people
nearby want you to know when they are
nearby.

5. To read more analysis of “Nearby
Friends” from Facebook, and
Foursquare’s “Swarm,” read the original
article over at Techcrunch.