Drifting away from Facebook

Version 1.7.2 of Facebook for Android, released on October 5^th, was apparently trying to update my location in the background, using the GPS. Was, because I’ve downgraded to 1.7.1 and may completely remove the application from my handset. Oh! I know that every time Facebook introduces something new, people criticize before congregating in even greater numbers. But somehow, this time, it feels different.

This is another disappointment, and could well be the proverbial straw that will break my back. I cannot understand why FB’s developers would want to track me when the app is inactive. If they were sophisticated, it could suggest that FB is planning on using such data to fine tune targeting, but activating the GPS in the background, even if the application has not been called once during the day, is anything but sophisticated, accounting for close to 50% of battery drain!

In the meantime, the desktop interface is moving in odd directions. If I can understand the value of some recent innovations, I would also want basic features to work: but messaging has remained primitive; I still can’t resize and/or pop the chat window; search is not working.

I once really hoped that FB would provide a great solution to manage social interactions. Not anymore. Sigh….

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