Niantic's starting to introduce some cool and useful new features to Pokemon GO [Free], with the recent addition of Pokemon Appraisal, and now the next new feature: Buddy Pokemon. You can now assign a Pokemon of your choice to become your buddy, and they will appear alongside your avatar on your profile. Niantic is promising that there will be "in-game rewards and experiences" available to you and your buddy, such as getting candy for walking together. Neat!
But what if you change your mind" Well, you can swap buddies at any point. That's right, if you fall out with your buddy like Asif did with Mudasir, then you can find your Salman. Huzzah! Buddy Pokemon are "just around the corner" so we'll hopefully see it relaly soon. Niantic's promising more for this fall, which may be necessary with the weather possibly becoming less naturally inviting to Pokemon catching.

...