Facebook has announced it is expanding its “weather greetings” feature by adding a full weather forecast inside its mobile app and desktop site. The new update can also enable weather enthusiasts get notifications with more detailed greetings.
The feature which is powered by Weather.com gives a user full forecast of the coming week with hourly updates. Users can access it from the News Feed or the ‘More’ menu on the mobile app.
According to Tech Crunch, Facebook confirmed the new feature has launched to around 95 percent of its global population as of this week.
Many years ago, the social media network has added forecasts to events and public places, and more recently was spotted testing weather updates in its News Feed in the UK.
The new feature displays weather highs and lows, along with a more general forecast – such as whether it will be sunny, cloudy, rainy or stormy.
Forecast on an hourly basis is shown at the top of the page. Facebook said it is currently testing more detailed greetings which it may make available by the end of February 2017.
Users can also display information in Celsius or Fahrenheit. However they will not be able to swipe through multiple locations. If they want to change to a different location, it will require returning to the Settings and tap the one they want to view.
“We are doing this because our goal is to develop products that connect people to the things they care about the most and create moments of joy in people’s day, like simply telling you that it is going to rain later,” said a Facebook spokesperson.
Tech Crunch projects that the goal with the new feature is to keep Facebook users in the app by offering them the information they would otherwise need to look for elsewhere, while also offering similar experiences to those that are found in other third-party mobile applications.
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