Facebook Dropping Regional Networks

Facebook has announced that it’s to drop the site’s “regional network” feature.

The feature, introduced in 2005, allowed people to connect with fellow Facebookers in the same geographic region. However with the massive growth in Facebook usage since then (2005 is a long time ago in the social network world!) these regional networks are now seen as less useful. According to Facebook:

We’ve grown substantially since then, and today these networks too often represent large geographical areas – sometimes entire countries – that no longer accurately reflect people’s real-world connections.

As a result the site has begun to phase out regional networks from various parts of the site such as news feed filters, group membership, etc.

This all makes a lot of sense but is also a little disappointing. One of the nice features of social networking is connecting with people online who you then meet in real life. Even if the existing regional networks are no longer appropriate for Facebook it would be nice if some alternative geographic support could be introduced.