14 DAY TRIAL // A new application now live in the Bing Maps Gallery meshes together Microsoft’s online mapping, location and search tool with Facebook. The My Friends application for Bing Maps is designed to tap the user’s Facebook account in order to get information from the social network. According to Chris Pendleton, the Bing Maps technical evangelist for Microsoft, the app is designed to leverage the Facebook application programming interfaces (APIs) in order to pull in friends from Facebook.
“My Friends – Finding your Facebook friends just got a heck of a lot easier. The new My Friends map app lets you view all of your friends right in Bing Maps! Fire up the new application, log in via Facebook Connect, select “Allow” to allow Bing Maps to connect to your profile (to get your friend list) and any of your friends who have listed a ‘Current City’ in their profile will have their profile picture pinned to the map,” Pendleton said.
The My Friends app for Bing Maps is capable of delivering a new perspective over Facebook friends. The Redmond company’s platform allows users to visualize their contacts in accordance with their geographic location. Of course, the app is also designed to permit basic Facebook functionality, including reading friends’ status messages or posts to their wall.
“Look at where all of your Facebook friends are at any given time! Clicking their picture will show you their picture and status. We also have the de-clustering algorithm in place so if you have a number of friends in one place it will spin their photos into a circle and tether them back to the location with a line. This is a great new way to watch your Facebook friends move around the world…especially if you’re friends with me! Finally, you can write directly on someone’s Facebook wall from within Bing Maps. Ah, the power of APIs,” Pendleton added.