Yahoo Fire Eagle brings location notification to Facebook

Jake Widman
Saturday, 14 March 2009 07:44

Business IT - Networking

Yahoo's Friends on Fire application for Facebook lets users display their location information to their Facebook friends.
Fire Eagle, available for general use sinceAugust 2008, is Yahoo's venture into providing Location Based Services(LBS). The platform lets subscribers upload and share information abouttheir location and enables developers to build applications andservices that make use of that information. Existing applications builton Fire Eagle include Dopplr, a site where people can share theirtravel schedules, recommend restaurants and bars, and find out whentheir friends will be in town; and several mobile apps for discoveringlocal information or meeting friends.

Friends on Fire is meant to bring the same kind of social LBS toFacebook. With the app, a Facebook user can post a map on their Wallshowing where they are, along with notes and other tags called"signals." They can also use one of the several Fire Eagle mobile appsto update their location on Facebook.

Early users have noted that Friends on Fire location notifications onlyshow addresses, not business names or other useful information. You canfind out that Tom is at 884 E. 4th St. (as the sample on the Fire Eagleblog page shows), for example, but you won't know if he's at arestaurant or a club unless he adds that info in a comment. Other FireEagle-based applications have done more to associate locations withevents.

The timing for the Friends on Fire release may be problematic, sinceFacebook is rolling out its new interface this week. On the one hand,Facebook users will be spending time tweaking their settings for thenew interface and may be more open than usual to adding a new service.On the other hand, some may be so frustrated with the new options thatthe last thing they want is to learn a new app as well.

Besides Friends on Fire, Yahoo also released the Fire Eagle Updater forFirefox. This add-on relies on Mozilla's Geode technology and WiFisignals to learn your location and let you broadcast it to Fire Eagleby clicking on a button in the Firefox toolbar.