Facebook is testing a new way to help you find your friends called ‘shortcuts’ that’s not too dissimilar from sharing your phone number to get connected.
The new feature spotted by The Next Web’s social media intern Carlos Sandoval offers an unique 8 digit number to help you find friends quickly, as opposed to searching for them by names, which aren’t always entirely unique. If you enter a friend’s shortcut, the app takes you directly to their page.
The feature, which appears to have only rolled out to a small amount of users, is an interesting way to find friends that goes above and beyond phone numbers. It seems that the move could be due to the fact that some users don’t share their phone numbers with the service for fear of privacy, so these unique numbers offer an easier way to find friends.
We’re not so sure it’s easier than just searching for someone by name, but if it rolled out to all it would be interesting to see if the feature was used much.
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