The next version of the Baidu Maps mobile apps will feature a useful new feature that will help you find your friends in real-time. In the past you’d have to share a link to a static location via SMS or email, but once the update rolls out to the Baidu Maps app for iPhone and Android, you’ll be able to view a friend’s position as they move and also chat with them right within the app so as to help one another meet at the same spot.
The feature will come in v5.1 of the Baidu Maps app. It’s currently at v5.0. The ‘find my friend’ function (not the official name for it) will only work when all parties consent to it (it supports more than two people), and presumably only so long as all individuals are signed into the app with a Baidu account. It’ll look like this:
Though Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) is China’s top search engine, its Baidu Maps app is only the second most popular mobile mapping service in the country. Nonetheless, it can lay claim to 80 million users. The app has been updated a great deal in the past year as Baidu puts a greater emphasis on location-based and mobile-oriented offerings.
China’s leading mobile maps app right now is Autonavi’s (NASDAQ:AMAP). That company is now 28 percent owned by e-commerce titan Alibaba.
(Source: QQ Tech – article in Chinese)
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