Facebook Changes Your Email Address, Tests Potentially Creepy App

What’s the Latest Development?

Though Facebook’s IPO scored billions (and underwhelmed Wall Street speculators), the social media giant is taking no breathers. The company has just replaced all its users’ email addresses with a new @facebook.com email, which will route all communications to its own Messages inbox. Facebook has also tested a new app, “Find Friends Nearby,” which allows you to find other Facebook users in the same physical vicinity. Facebook engineer Ryan Patterson said that the feature “was meant to help you connect with people you’ve just met while you’re out at an event, not necessarily find new people…”

What’s the Big Idea?

If you insist your personal email be linked with and displayed on your Facebook account, the change is easy enough to make: “edit Contact Info, then select the facebook.com email to be ‘hidden from timeline.’ Select another to be ‘shown on timeline,’ if you desire.” Facebook’s “Find Friends Nearby” app, an attempt by the company to strengthen its users’ mobile experience, is likely to face stronger questions as location-based friend finders approach the creepy line. “And a giant social network company that has already suffered privacy blows will need to be extra sensitive as not to upset its users.”

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