Yahoo, through its location-aware developer program Fire Eagle has created a new Facebook application called Friends on Fire. Friends on Fire is a social location application that collocates your present location and allows you to share it with your trusted friends. The application utilizes Yahoo maps to pinpoint your exact location, or your Facebook friends’ location if they have installed the application and share it with you.
Friends on Fire works something like this. Once you’ve installed the application on your Facebook account, you’ll see a Yahoo map featuring pushpins that identify your location and your friends’ location on the map. You can add notes on your location or locations you’ve previously visited which your friends can see. In a way, this application can be used for recommending a good place to visit, be it a restaurant, a club or anything. The updates or notes you make on the map will be streamed to your Facebook news feed.
Friends on Fire is certainly a useful Facebook application but it will be more useful if a mobile interface would developed. Location-aware services can become useful only if its use on a mobile setting. The Facebook application would be rather useless if it stays as an application that sits on your desktop only.
Another thing to consider is the fact that it will also be more useful if your friends would also install the application in their Facebook profile. Otherwise its social aspects will not be fully utilized.
But the good thing about this application is the fact that Fire Eagle is a Yahoo product, and it is indeed very interesting to see Yahoo joining the Facebook popularity wagon.
