Facebook to Fully Deprecate Regional Networks by September 30

August 5th, 2009

By Justin Smith

Although Facebook said back in June that regional networks would be deprecated at some point, it didn’t give a specific date at the time. Recently, however, the company said that regional networks will be completely removed from the site by September 30.

Back when Facebook expanded from a college-only network to being open to anyone in 2006, it introduced the concept of “regional networks” to let users share more information about other people in the city or country they live in. Some default privacy settings for profile page content were set to a user’s regional network, and Facebook created network pages for people in the same areas to connect.

However, regional networks never really worked out. Because there was no way to verify users’ physical location, regional networks never became a useful privacy filter. And since regional networks often contained hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people, the network hub pages were some of the most heavily spammed areas on Facebook.

So over a year ago, Facebook removed the network pages and network tab from the top of Facebook. And now, Facebook says they will be eliminating the concept of regional networks from the site altogether soon. Nevertheless, some users are upset, because regional networks were an effective way to find friends in geographic locations – Facebook needs to make it possible for users to still do so somehow after the change.

regionalfilter

The change will have the following effects:

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.

This change will actually make a lot of information shared on Facebook more private, as many users left their profile privacy settings open to regional networks that probably allowed more people than they intended to access their profile and photos. Now, the concept of regional networks will be gone altogether, leaving school and work networks – both of which must be verified through a company or school email address – in tact.

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12 Responses to “Facebook to Fully Deprecate Regional Networks by September 30”

melissa cheater Says:
August 5th, 2009 at 9:02 am
As always with Facebook, a strong idea executed just a little off.

I am just one user but I have found the regional filters very helpful in search. It seems like it would also remain relevant for events.

For example, with Facebook’s size, name search for users often returns too many results. This is solved by filtering for location. It is also helpful in friend management when deciding who to invite, who to notify with local events or information. If the same filters available for target social ads and page updates were made available in these contexts then usability would return.

I’ve often wanted a way to message all my ‘london’ friends without having to manually maintain groups for each city …i.e. Imagine if I could target an individual staus update to only push to my ‘city x’ friends to let them know I will be visiting etc. Or only to my teenage friends to let them know I secretly like the jonas brothers (I don’t).
30th September: last day for Facebook Regional Networks | Geekword Says:
August 6th, 2009 at 10:37 am
[...] 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 Sept…. [...]
Facebook Saying Goodbye to Regions « The Official Blog of S2EO Says:
August 7th, 2009 at 10:03 am
[...] Saying Goodbye to Regions By the end of September, Facebook will no longer include regions as part of its networks. Currently, users can choose to be a part of several networks, including [...]
Ahmed Hashim Says:
September 10th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
This feature is very useful specially if you are traveling and looking for friends located in your destination !! which is my case.
Facebook Lets You Filter Friends By City Says:
September 10th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
[...] to find friends in particular cities. It’s a new version of a feature it had removed when it deprecated the “networks” part of user profiles a few months [...]
Diana Says:
October 14th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Gah. I HATE this new change!! It makes it nearly impossible to really network using Facebook. Honestly, if people are too clueless to manage their own privacy settings, why should it affect everyone else who understand how to set things privately? This was a poorly thought-out change, and could have been achieved so much easier with a more clear-cut privacy feature that people could use.

Do the folks at FB not realize that most of us have worked at several jobs? Been to a few schools? So.. WHICH network do we join? And how do we find associates, other than trying to do the people search. The beauty of FB was networking, and discovering people you’re connected with. FAIL.
Matt Says:
October 16th, 2009 at 10:31 am
I detest this change!! I’ve always made most of my profile open to my local city network, because that’s where I mostly meet people. Conversely, it’s always been fun to look people who left their FB profiles open to my regional network on FB, whether because I’m interested in dating them, or I’ve seen them around and learned their names. In fact, this has accounted for most of the time I spend/waste on FB. Now Facebook has killed that off–I think most people are going to go with the “friends only” setting instead of the “everyone” setting. So, bye bye, Facebook! It was fun while it lasted…

(That said, it’s October 16, and it seems that my privacy settings still have an entry for “my networks”, and I’m able to access profiles of people who aren’t my friends and aren’t in my school/work networks but who previously were in the same city network as me. Has the change been aborted or just postponed???????)
Renee Says:
October 18th, 2009 at 9:03 am
I’ve noticed the Sept 30th date is a little off too. Whats going on. Will people be notified of the change?
Matt Says:
October 19th, 2009 at 9:22 am
I hope they don’t change it any further… they just need to leave it alone now. People who don’t want to belong to a regional network were always free not to join one, and people who wanted more privacy could adjust their settings accordingly. For the rest of us, regional networks were very useful.
Candy Says:
October 19th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Matt, same here… looks like I was kicked off from my regional network. But, I am still able to look up profiles of people from that regional network. (that is, people that aren’t in my school/work network or friend list).

So, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
tara Says:
November 5th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I am also extremely upset over the squaching of regional networks. It was very helpful getting in touch with old high school classmates since I and most of the others have since moved from our small town. Bad Facebook, bad move!
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