Lyft launches ‘trending destinations’ feature for aimless (and adventurous) riders

It’s Friday night, you’re ready to hit the town, but you don’t know where to go. Lyft wants to help with that, in a fun, albeit “joiner-y” kind of way.

On Friday, Lyft rolled out a new feature to Android users in Los Angeles and San Francisco called Trending Destinations. The point of the new feature is to help users “explore” their city.

When Lyft riders open the app to begin a ride, Lyft asks where they are going. Now, under the bar where you input your destination, there will be an option to click to see “Trending Destinations,” or popular drop-off spots for other riders nearby. Lyft calls these places “points of interest” and they include bars, restaurants, music venues, and street fairs.

For the moment, this is a limited test in the two California cities. But Lyft says it’s possible that it will roll the feature out to more cities in the future.

On the privacy front, Lyft says the feature uses anonymized, aggregated data. Anyone scrolling Trending Locations won’t be able to see who’s there — just that other living, breathing humans are heading that way.

There’s definitely an upside to the feature. You could cast it as a fun way to simply see what’s going on in your area. Maybe you would find a new bar or local event you wouldn’t have heard of otherwise.

There’s also something just a little bit sad about it, that it’s for aimless urban dwellers, isolated by city living and social media. Le sigh. 

But if this helps them (us? me?) figure out how to get out in the world and be amongst fellow humans, more power to ’em.