What Is The Future Of Facebook’s iPad App? Engineer Quits Out Of Frustration
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Apparently, Facebook has had an official iPad app waiting in the wings, but for reasons unknown, has yet to release it to the public.
According to Business Insider, engineer Jeff Verkoeyen had been working with a team of developers since January on the iPad app. In a recent blog post where he rants about leaving the company, he stated that the Facebook iPad app has been “feature-complete” since May, but the company has continuously pushed back a release date.
Out of frustration, the jaded engineer took a job with Google as an engineer for back-end mobile technology for the Android team.
From Verkoeyen’s blog:
It is now nearly 5 months since the app was feature complete and I haven’t seen it released except for when the project was leaked on Techcrunch. Needless to say this was a frustrating experience for me. The experience of working on this app was a large contribution to the reasons why I left Facebook, though that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a difficult decision.
Verkoenyen has since removed information relating to the Facebook iPad app from his blog and contacted both Business Insider and TechCrunch to back paddle his statement. From Business Insider:
He also called us to clarify that the frustration was his “personally.” He said “It’s no reflection on Facebook as a company, which is an incredible place to work.
You may recall that TechCrunch discovered an iPad-optimized app, hidden in the code of Facebook’s iPhone app a few months ago. The tech-based website is speculating that the reason Facebook keeps postponing the release is due to the company’s tenuous relationship with Apple. According to TechCrunch, Facebook may be using the unreleased app as leverage when dealing with the iPad makers. The two have been in what can best be described as an unhealthy on-again-off-again relationship since last year. Facebook was supposed to be a major part of Apple’s Ping release, but full integration was pulled just before launch. Then, Facebook was supposed to be integrated into iOS 5, but as you probably already know, Apple went with Twitter instead.
No matter the reason for the delay in releasing an official Facebook app, the fact remains that it is almost complete, but not yet in the hands of iPad owners. Will the social networking website ever show its love for the iPad?
