Comments on: Everything you need to know about today’s Facebook announcement

By: Diana

Diana — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:40:15 +0000

Another issue in this badly thought-out change is that many people move in the US. And many of us want to be in the network where we previously lived.. we do NOT want to be tied to a job or school, we want to be connected regionally. It allowed us to network regionally, and find friends of friends, and former classmates and co-workers easily.

Terrible idea to remove these. What were they thinking? It’s not hard to set your privacy settings, they never were… people don’t want to be that private on FB, they want old friends to find them, etc. Why did you make it harder?

By: lauren

lauren — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:39:10 +0000

Erm how long will it take to be sorted-as i can’t get into facebook to see anything-its just loading for ages, but nothing happens-this because you are doing sum changes, to the website?

By: jardenberg kommenterar – 2009-07-02 — jardenberg unedited

jardenberg kommenterar – 2009-07-02 — jardenberg unedited — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:02:02 +0000

[...] Everything you need to know about today’s Facebook announcement [...]

By: Dave Nattriss

Dave Nattriss — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:16:41 +0000

I think regional networks are right to be taken away. As you (Paul) say, they don’t really work as people can live in more than one, and in the UK for instance, a lot of people have joined the London network even though they are well outside the M25 area and not in London at all – they just don’t have an alternative regional network to join.

The easiest way to distinguish between people with the same name (when they’re not your friends) is to just put their e-mail address (which you will know if you know them?) into the regular Facebook search box – this will limit the search result to just them. Beyond that, you can do an advanced profile search (http://www.facebook.com/advanced.php) to search within your network(s), and I assume when they get rid of regional networks, you’ll revert to a national network instead.

Don’t forget that Facebook profiles do have fields for ‘Current location’ and ‘Hometown’ which could be displayed in search results.

By: Martin Bryant

Martin Bryant — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:29:58 +0000

Or indeed ‘Add’ a location field :)

By: Martin Bryant

Martin Bryant — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:29:11 +0000

Paul, I think they’ll have to at a location field. With Regional networks being removed there needs to be some way to identify where you are. There’s a ‘Hometown’ field but that’s open to different interpretations.

Maybe a future version of the mobile app will allow you to submit realtime location data if you so desire.

By: Paul Lomax

Paul Lomax — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:33:37 +0000

The only issue I can see is removing regional networks.

Half the time it’s the only way to distinguish between many people with the same name if you can’t make out their profile pic. Which is often the case as you only get a thumbnail.

Will they add a location field, Twitter-style?

At least with twitter’s location field you can be as specific (geo lat-long) or as vague as you like, and if you live in multiple places (I work in Manchester during the week and live in London at weekends for example) you can express that. Right now facebook only allows one geographical network at a time…