It’s a familiar situation: it’s Sunday and you’re hung-over. You decide to alleviate the pain with a pack of Wotsits from the local shop, but when you leave the house, greasy haired and wearing a pair of dodgy tracksuit bottoms, you run into someone you don’t want to. They’re probably a boring work colleague, an ex, or most likely, someone you’re friends with on Facebook but don’t quite remember why. You exchange some perfunctory, stilted chat. It’s all very awkward. You sidestep the conversation as soon as you can and make a quick exit.

This sort of encounter is set to become all the more common with the launch of new social media that aims to tell your “friends” where you are. The biggest, Facebook’s forthcoming Nearby Friends service, uses GPS and mobile phone signals to triangulate your position and then broadcast it to your online contacts. You’ll be notified when friends are in your vicinity, all with the aim, explains Facebook, of helping you get in touch and meet up. It’s not just Facebook.

Other social media, such as location-based network Foursquare, have been encouraging us to broadcast our locations and increase our real-world interactions for years. And thanks to our share-everything culture, a quick glance at our social network feed can tell us if anyone is hanging out nearby from a GPS-tagged Instagram post or detailed Facebook status.