30th September: last day for Facebook Regional Networks

Facebook previously had made it pretty clear that it has plans of putting an end to its regional networks. Facebook has kept its word and has announced that all the regional networks of the most popular social network will be completely removed by 30th September.

The concept of regional networks was introduced way back in 2006. The primary purpose for introducing this sort of network was to let users share information about people and areas within their native country or city for that matter. Facebook created network pages for various regions in order to provide a platform for users living in a similar area to connect with each other.

Sadly, the purpose behind this network type did not reach its maximum potential. It is because, there was no way to verify user’s physical location, regional clusters never became a useful privacy filter and infact were heavily targeted by spammers

Following are the effects that will be visible as a result of this decision

• Regional network filters will no longer be available in the home page stream (Facebook says few people were using them anyway).
• For developers, getStandardInfo and getUserInfo will now return current_location for location information. However, corporate and educational networks will still be returned for affiliations.
• Regional networks will no longer appear in privacy settings (though you can still share content with everyone or a school or work network).Groups or events that are only open to members of regional networks will now be open to everyone.
• If your current regional network is a city, that information will be moved to the “Current City” field of your profile.
• If your current regional network is a region, a new “Current Region” field will be listed on your profile.

On hearing this annoucement, a few users are not altogether happy for a very simple. They no longer have a useful platform to find users within their region. Facebook should consider providing another platform to do so.