Facebook's Rolling out a New City Guides Feature For Its App
While the Facebook app's latest travel-related feature, City Guides, originally launched back in December, it seems to have been rolled out to a larger number of users this week. The new tool aims to serve as a virtual tour guide, assembling information drawn from the web giant's own data, including the places your Facebook friends have already visited as well as additional travel info that'll help you identify popular spots to visit in each city.
“We’re testing a redesigned surface on city Pages that showcases information about your city," a Facebook spokesperson told Tech Crunch. "This content already exists on Facebook, and during this test we’ll be centralizing it in a way that is more personalized and relevant to you. So, this new feature can help people get a better sense of their city, or a city they’re visiting through their friends’ eyes.”
Located in the app drawer, the City Guides feature shows users a list of large metropolitan cities like London and Los Angeles — smaller cities are not currently featured — which of your friends have visited them and any attractions they visited while they were there. You'll also be able to view a list of events going on while you're in town.
Once you click on a certain destination, the city's profile appears, showing a list of traditionally popular attractions, as well as suggestions for things to do based on tips from friends and locals.
If you're not seeing the new feature just yet, it may be a result of Facebook's rolling out process — a few of us here in the office didn't see it until this morning, so it might just take some time before you'll have access to it.
H/T: Tech Crunch
