Snapchat users have a new way to monitor friends. The company announced today that it will be introducing real-time location sharing, to be used as a temporary friend system while friends and family are out on a date or on their way home, for example.
This feature is similar to the Find My app on iOS, where users who have signed up can see and share the exact location. The Snapchat setting can be enabled for 15 minutes or a few hours with individual users and is only available among mutual friends in the app. To reduce the risk of being tracked or pressured into constantly sharing location, users can stop sharing without sending a notification to the other party, Snapchat says. The feature is disabled by default and there is no option to share real-time location with all your Snapchat friends.
To enable the setting, users go to a friend’s profile and choose how long to share their location. Live location sharing status is displayed in the chat window with that friend.
This update is Snapchat’s first live location feature. Users already have the ability to show friends where they were when they last used the app, which populates the Snap Map used by 250 million Snapchat users every month.
Snapchat has partnered with on this offering It’s on us, a national nonprofit program focused on stopping sexual assault on campus. In addition to the friendship system, starting today, Snapchat will include an in-app viewer awareness message.
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