At Niantic we’re building a real-world metaverse that brings people together to explore the world through AR. Today, we’re introducing an evolution to the social experience within our games.

We’ve been testing several community features with a group of Ingress Agents over the last few months, and are excited to now launch our social app experience in closed beta to more of the Ingress community.

The standalone app is designed to make it much easier to communicate with other Agents, discover Agent communities, and coordinate real-world Missions – all in one place.

Most of our Agents rely on lots of different communications channels to connect and organize real-world activities today. We’re excited to make this experience better for our community, with more features coming soon.

Currently available to select Ingress Agents on an invite-only basis, key features include:

• Local #Communities: Easily find other players by creating local communities around you.

• Niantic Friends: Easily add and manage your friends and fellow Agents in Ingress, and across all Niantic titles.

• Direct & Group Messaging: Organize all your chats with friends in one place, and coordinate Field Ops.

• Real-World Events: Quickly create and share local events, farms, or meetups with reminders, and invite your community to join and play!

With these new community features, we’re fostering the kinds of real-world social connections that our games are best known for. We’re excited to hear from the community and continue enhancing the experience.