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During the last three months of 2012, Facebook’s mobile daily users,
for the first time ever, surpassed the site’s web daily users. To
accommodate Facebook’s 680 million monthly active mobile app users, 2013
will be spent developing ways to entice even more mobile users, keep users active and interested, and increase revenue at the same time.
One of these projects that Facebook is focusing on and plans to
release in mid- March, is a smartphone application intended to help
users find nearby friends by tracking the location of other users. The
developing team of Facebook’s location tracking app includes
engineers from Glancee and Gowalla (location based networks), and is
lead by Google product director, Peter Deng. The tracking app will
utilize the customer’s whereabouts to sell ads based on the user’s daily
habits and location.
Facebook has already been recording the GPS coordinates of mobile
users when they check into a venue, update their status, or take photos
with their phone. This new application will take this process to the
next level by following users locations in the background, meaning the
app will keep tracking even when other programs are running or if the
phone is not even in use.
Privacy Issues
Facebook is not the first to design a location tracking device, but
follows examples like Apple’s Find My Friends and Highlight by Math Camp
Inc. However, many of these types of tracking applications have failed
to gain a large user base because of the overuse the extensive apps have
on a phone’s battery life, and most importantly, the users concern for
their privacy.
Facebook has a data-use policy which tells the customer that the
company may use their personal location based information in order to
alert users and their friends of nearby events, deals and even people
that you might be interested in finding. The policy further explains
that it can use your info for marketing and advertising, but the
information gathered by the app will be kept only until it is no longer
used to provide services.
