Facebook has introduced a new feature that essentially fits a full-fledged weather application into its mobile app and desktop site.
The new feature, accessible from the News Feed, or on the "More" section of the Facebook app, displays a full weather forecast for the week ahead, which is culled from data provided by Weather.com.
Check The Weather Using Facebook
The new feature is an upgraded iteration of Facebook's "weather greetings," and the company confirmed that it has already launched it to about 95 percent of its worldwide population as of this time, TechCrunch reports.
Facebook will also let users opt to receive weather reports, so they don't forget to pack an umbrella on a potentially rainy day. The new Weather section will be set by default to the user's current location, although additional locations may be added on top of it. Users may also opt to view the temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit.
But there's a bummer: users won't be able to easily flick through multiple locations once they're added in. Users will have to instead laboriously change the location by returning to the settings menu and invoking the necessary action.
The Weather Page
The information displayed is relatively basic; nothing special here, although the usual suspects — highs, lows, general forecast and more — are available. There's also a daily forecast by the hour on top of the page, a feature that's common among preexisting weather apps.
As previously mentioned, the information displayed is powered by Weather.com's API, and Facebook gives it its due credit, proffering users a link at the nether part of the page if they want expanded weather information.
Also, at the top of the Weather page is a special art that will constantly shift based on the current forecast. For example, rainy days will be accompanied by an illustration of a deer hidden under a tree, while a partly cloudy forecast shows clouds with a duck hiding behind a bush.
The visual aids not only make the weather report more inspired, but they make things feel more seamless, personalized and clean, which is certainly a much better experience than simply glancing at plain forecast information without any visual indicators. It's all in the details, as they say.
It appears that the goal of the new Weather feature is to keep Facebook users on the service by offering information that users would normally use third-party apps to get, though Facebook says that it's actually just about pleasantries.
Facebook Wants To Make Its Users Happy
"We are doing this because our goal is to ... create moments of joy in people's day, like simply telling you that it's going to rain later," according to a Facebook spokesperson.
But of course, we know Facebook wants to be a lot of things: a definitive marketplace, the new LinkedIn, a center for livestreaming, and more, so it comes as no surprise that something as simple as weather information is now bundled inside the app — another reason not to exit the app altogether.
Have you accessed Facebook's new Weather page already? What do you think of it so far? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below!
