Who doesn’t want to know the future? Well, Facebook is just in the track to help its users to understand their future location. The social networking giant has filed a patent with the U.S.P.T.O for a technology that can predict the next place we’ll be in.
How will this work? It’ll be using our previous location history as well as other people’s, to make predictions. Determining your current location the technology will compute for the probability where you’ll be visiting next.
It’s not just one’s location, but Facebook will also use other’s location data to predict your history. Now, this sounds convincing indeed.
Another patent application for Wireless Signals on Online Social Networks is also for a technology that will use WiFi, Bluetooth, cellular and near-field communication (NFC) signals. This means users with a similar profile usually go for a coffee at a specific place after a movie; Facebook will automatically predict that the similar users will go for coffee after watching a movie at the same particular place.
This information is used as an alternative to GPS because, as the patent describes, it may provide a more precise geographic location. The technology will continuously learn your site and keep its history to provide for more accurate future predictions.
Another patent filed by Facebook, i.e., prediction based on historical location for users of an online system used to glean location and movement trends and to model location chains. The technology could even differentiate between different places among people who live in a city and who are just visiting a city.
These patents hint that Facebook will continue in gathering personal information though there’s no guarantee that it will ever implement these technologies.
