{"id":3877,"date":"2017-03-03T19:14:03","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T19:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/facebook-adds-a-travel-planning-feature-called-city-guides.html"},"modified":"2017-03-03T19:14:03","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T19:14:03","slug":"facebook-adds-a-travel-planning-feature-called-city-guides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebook-adds-a-travel-planning-feature-called-city-guides.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook adds a travel-planning feature called \u2018City Guides\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

Facebook has been busy with the app updates, as of late. In recent months, it has added new sections for finding nearby Wi-Fi,<\/a> meeting new people<\/a>, checking the weather<\/a>, and more. Now, it\u2019s rolling out yet another addition to the \u201cMore\u201d menu inside the Facebook app: City Guides. A potential challenger to Foursquare, Facebook\u2019s guides will show you a list of\u00a0cities and which of your friends visited, along with various recommendations of places to go and things to do.<\/p>\n

When you click into an individual city, you\u2019ll see a row of rounded profile icons\u00a0of your friends who have visited there. Tap on each one, and a list of the places they\u2019ve been \u2013 like hotels, restaurants, attractions, and other businesses \u2013 will appear. This data is presumably being extracted from users\u2019 check-ins and Facebook posts.<\/p>\n

\"img_3247\"<\/p>\n

Facebook has long allowed users to check-in via their status updates, but it hadn\u2019t\u00a0done much with that data, in terms of offering a consumer-facing feature to rival Foursquare. That\u2019s been fairly surprising, given that asking friends for ideas of what to do in a new city seems like a perfect feature for a social network like Facebook.<\/p>\n

City Guides seems to correct that\u00a0problem, or at least it\u2019s trying to. The feature itself, however, is more useful if you have a lot of well-traveled friends. But also included in each city\u2019s guide is a list of \u201cPlaces the Locals Go,\u201d which pulls in popular, highly rated spots. Here, Facebook uses technology to\u00a0summarize what people are saying about the suggested place.<\/p>\n

For example, a restaurant\u2019s summary might read: \u201cPeople talk about delicious tacos, friendly atmosphere, and brews on tap.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"img_3248\"<\/p>\n

Each item has a bookmark icon to the right, which lets you save the place to a list of favorites. These bookmarked items are available in a \u201cSaved\u201d section at the top of the city\u2019s page. You can also save the city itself, to make a sort of bucket list of places you want to go.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, if\u00a0you scroll down further in the guide, you\u2019ll see a list of Upcoming Events, which you can swipe through horizontally. Beneath this, is a list of Popular Attractions, which includes things like famous landmarks, tourist attractions, and scenic places. All these can be bookmarked, as well.<\/p>\n

\"img_3249\"<\/p>\n

Social travel planning apps (often using Facebook data) was an area where a number of startups competed years ago, including Gtrot<\/a>, Zetrip<\/a>, Roam7<\/a>,\u00a0Trippy<\/a>,\u00a0Jetpac<\/a>,\u00a0Gogobot<\/a>\u00a0and others. But the market later\u00a0fizzled out.<\/p>\n

Belatedly, Facebook has stepped in.<\/p>\n

Its city guides feature feels like a socially infused version of a traditional travel planning app, but they\u2019re also augmented with the public data available on Facebook, which makes them more useful.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, City Guides seems to only focus on major international cities, and not the small, out-of-way locales that are also popular destinations, like beachy islands, quaint\u00a0resort towns, remote small towns, and more. It would be great to see this city guides feature expanded in the future so you could pull up any<\/em> city in the world, no matter its size, and see what your friends did while there.<\/p>\n

The City Guides feature was seen<\/a>\u00a0in testing last year, noted 9to5Mac, which also spotted<\/a> this launch, but it now appears to be rolling out more broadly on mobile.<\/p>\n

Facebook confirmed the new feature, but noted\u00a0it\u2019s still in limited availability.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re testing a redesigned surface on city Pages that showcases information about your city, a spokesperson said. \u201cThis content already exists on Facebook, and during this test we\u2019ll 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\u2019re visiting through their friends\u2019 eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/ySJ3oRCCTlY\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook has been busy with the app updates, as of late. In recent months, it has added new sections for finding nearby Wi-Fi, meeting new people, checking the weather, and <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-3877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t