Facebook adds new City Guides so it can own your vacations, too
Some people won't plan a trip without combing through travel sites and hitting up friends familiar with the area. If Facebook has its way, soon you'll be able to do both without ever leaving its app.
Facebook is testing out a new City Guides feature for select iOS and Android users. It's Facebook's answer to TripAdvisor, providing curated suggestions for local attractions, events, restaurants and more. To keep the experience properly social, it also shows you a list of friends who've visited the city and what they did when they were there.
The feature was first spotted back in December, but The Next Web noticed its release to a wider number of users this morning.
You can find City Guides in the Explore tab of the app.
From there, you'll find a curated list of international cities your friends have visited. With SXSW on the horizon, I'm not surprised to see Austin up high on my list.
After selecting one of the cities, you can take a closer look at what's around. The page displays the weather and local time and lets you start planning your trip by saving attractions and upcoming events in your own personal itinerary.
There's no word on exactly when the feature will be available for all app users, or when it'll make its way to browsers on Facebook's website.
“We're testing a redesigned surface on city Pages that showcases information about your city," a Facebook spokesperson told us via email. "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.”
City Guides is Facebook's latest step in its mission to own pretty much every single aspect of modern life. Last month, it introduced enhanced weather forecasts with help from Weather.com and a feature to allow users to apply for jobs directly on the social network.
Topics Facebook
Brett Williams is a Tech Reporter at Mashable. He writes about tech news, trends and other tangentially related topics with a particular interest in wearables and exercise tech. Prior to Mashable, he wrote for Inked Magazine and Thrillist. Brett's work has also appeared on Fusion and AskMen, to name a few. You can follow Brett on Twitter @bdwilliams910.
