Lately, Facebook has been aggressively working on updating its applications. Previously, it had introduced a couple of location-centric, new features including finding nearby Wi-Fi, meeting new people, weather forecasting and much more. Introducing features to its ‘More’ menu, Facebook has added the following application: City Guides. A possible competitor to Foursquare, the city guides will contain a list of recommended cities based upon your friends’ visits, and the corresponding must visit places.
You can click and view individual cities through this new feature. The city guide will also show you your friend profiles who have visited there. You can tap and view list of places your friends have been to, based upon their check-ins, such as hotels, restaurants and various other attractions of the city. The app is built upon the data availed from users’ posts and social check-ins.
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City Guides Advance Feature
Even though Facebook has been providing check-in services to its users through status update, however, it hadn’t worked that much through that data. For a social network giant like Facebook, a feature with friend recommendation is fairly surprising.
City Guides is the solution to your travel problem, and is more useful if your friends are regular travelers. The feature also includes a list of ‘Places the Locals Go’ that recommends famous and highly rated places. Additionally, Facebook’s technology shows what people have said about the place you want to visit.
For instance, a summary of the restaurant might read:
“People talk about delicious tacos, friendly atmosphere, and brews on tap”
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Bookmark your Favorites
You can save your preferred place to favorites by clicking on the bookmark icon to the right. You can access these items in the ‘Saved’ section that you’ll see at the top of the city’s page. Furthermore, you can put that city in your bucket list that contains list of places you want to go to.
In addition, you can swipe through a list of Upcoming Events by scrolling down in the guide. Moreover, you can view a list of Popular Attractions that include various popular landmarks, tourist attractions, and scenic spots. You can also bookmark them as well.
Various startups including Gtrot, Zetrip, Roam7, Trippy, Jetpac, Gogobot and others struggled competing in a social travel planning (often using Facebook data) app for long time. However, none could make through.
Leading from the front, Facebook’s City Guides app has taken over the traditional travel planning app as they have amplified it with public data to make it more useful.
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Drawbacks
Unfortunately, it seem like the app’s main focus is on major international destinations leaving out small cities and local tourist spots. It does not provide suggestions of popular places at far away locales, such as remote villages, beach islands and more. The app can be of more use if it gets expanded in the future. If that happens, you could view any city regardless of its size and status.
A spokesperson said:
“We’re testing a redesigned surface on city Pages that showcases information about your city. 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”
9to5Mac reported that last year the City Guides was seen in test mode. Now it can be seen more specifically on mobile phones.
Facebook has stated that it has launched the new feature with limited availability at the moment.
Source: Techcrunch / Shutterstock
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