Facebook will axe five features from app by end of month
Facebook has axed five features in an update. The social media giant has carried out a major overhaul of its services to get rid of anything which is performing poorly.
Meta, Facebook's parent company, confirmed the axe of several services which will no longer be able for users from May 31. The features soon to be disappearing will include background location, location history, weather alerts, podcasts and nearby friends - podcasts only launched on the app one year ago.
The cuts are being made due to "low usage" and notifications have been sent to users who have used the features previously. The company is thought to be developing other and more useful services.
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Facebook spokesperson Emil Vazquez told The Verge : "While we’re deprecating some location-based features on Facebook due to low usage, people can still use Location Services to manage how their location information is collected and used.”
Below are the five services Facebook will be getting rid of according to the Mirror :
Podcasts
Just last April, Facebook confirmed it would be entering the ever-expanding and popular podcast market but, after a year, the company has decided to axe podcasts.
The company will stop users adding podcasts to the site after they sent a notification informing users of the planned changes.
Background location
After being criticised for its data privacy, Facebook will stop users letting the social networking giant accessing their location when they're not on the Facebook app. Users can now turn this off but this will no longer be a feature after May 31.
Location history
The social network giant has a digital map tied to the user's location history on their phone. This tracks their location history, with users able to access this information at any time.
Each time a user is logged into Facebook, and the location history is on, the company tracks your current location - but this feature will now disappear.
Weather alerts
Weather alerts, which inform users of the weather in their local area, will be no longer be available.
Facebook said it will stop recording location data in the background - which means the end of weather alerts on the site.
Nearby friends
The nearby friends feature will no longer be available after May 31 as Facebook axes the feature which allowed social media users and their friends to share their locations with each other.
When users turned on Nearby Friends, the feature turned on Location history, which allowed users and their friends to share locations with each other. And, when users turn on Nearby Friends, they are are also turning on Location history.
Location history must be turned on for some location features, such as Nearby Friends, to work on Facebook.
This automatically uses your location to create a map of places you have visited.
However, users have until August 1 to download and access their data - after this date the data collected will be deleted automatically.
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