INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Facebook Messenger could soon automatically tell your closest friends you&re at the gym, driving or in Tokyo
Messenger has been spotted prototyping a ported version of the Instagram close friends-only Threads app Auto Status option that launched in
October.
The unreleased Messenger feature would use your location, accelerometer and battery life to determine what you&re up to and share
it with a specific subset of your friends
But instead of sharing your exact coordinates, it overlays an emoji on your Messenger profile pic to indicate that you&re at the movies,
biking, at the airport or charging your phone.
It unclear if or when Messenger might launch Auto Status
But if released, the feature could become Facebook version of the AOL Away Message, allowing people to stay in closer touch without the
creepiness of exact location sharing
It might also help people coordinate online or offline meetups by revealing what friends are up to
Auto Status creates an ice breaker, so if it says a close friend is &at a cafe,& or &chilling,& you could ask to hang out.
Back in 2016, I
wrote about how exact location sharing had failed to become mainstream because knowing where someone is doesn&t tell you their intention
What matters is whether they&re free to interact with you, which none of the social networks offered.
The quest to cure loneliness
A few
products, like Down To Lunch and Free, came and went in the meantime
Snapchat Snap Map and its acquisition of Zenly both doubled down on precise location sharing, yet still we&re often stuck home wondering if
anyone we care about is similarly bored and might want to hang out.
Facebook has been experimenting in this space since at least early 2018,
when its manual Emoji Status was spotted
That allowed you to append an emoji of your choosing to your Messenger profile pic
Then in October, Facebook introduced Auto Status, but only in the Instagram side-app Threads.
Some users were initially creeped out by the
idea of Facebook relaying battery status
But Instagram director of Product Management Robby Stein explained to me that because you might not respond to a message if your phone goes
dead or is left on the charger, it useful info to relay to friends who might be wondering what you&re doing.
Then earlier this month,
reverse engineering master and constant TechCrunch tipster Jane Manchun Wong revealed a new, unreleased version of Emoji Status hidden in
Then today, Wong showed off how she similarly spotted Facebook trying to port Auto Status to Messenger
That would bring the feature to more than one billion monthly users compared to the relatively small base for Threads.
With Auto Status, you
can &Let specific friends see what you&re up to as you go about your day
Share location info, weather, and more, even when you&re not in the app.& Auto Status is only visible to a special list of friends you can
change at any time, similar to Instagram Close Friends
And the feature shares &no addresses or place names
Just types of locations, like &at a cafe.& Movement (driving, biking, walking), venue (at the movies, airport), cities (in Tokyo) and
battery status (low battery, charging) are some of categories of what Auto Status shares.
A Facebook Messenger communications representative
confirmed to TechCrunch that the Auto Status feature was being prototyped by Messenger, noting that &We&re always exploring new features to
improve your Messenger experience
This feature is still in early development and not externally testing.& The company also tweeted the statement.
One of the biggest
unsolved problems in social networking and messaging remains knowing whether friends are free to chat or hang out without having to ask them
Reaching out at the wrong time only to be ignored or rejected can feel awkward or intimidating, and can discourage connection later
But if you have a vague idea of what a close friend is up to, you can more deftly plan when to message them, and be more likely to get to
spend time together in person or just online.
That could be a cure to the loneliness that endless feed scrolling by ourselves can leave us
feeling.
Instagram launches Threads, a Close Friends chat app with auto-status
