My most popular post, bar none, is "Somebody unfriended you on Facebook?" It seems a lot of people want to know how to figure out who has dropped them as a Facebook friend. And Facebook (by design, I assume), doesn't make that easy. Most of the time (at least for me, when I was researching it), it wasn't because I was going to go crawling after them, begging them to take me back. It was just for my own information so I knew not to ask them again (for example, a high school friend that dropped you, and months later you're going through your graduating class list and thinking "why didn't I send her a friend request?" and do it again).
I thought that post was going to be obsolete, though, after I heard that i-Doodz had released an app for the iPhone called "Defriended." It was an app that did basically the same thing as the Greasemonkey script I mention in my post. It takes a list of your friends, and then every time you log in, it takes another list and compares them. If there are people missing, it tells you.
I guess Facebook didn't like that.
Before I could even blog about it (I was busy yesterday, or would have done it yesterday), it's gone! ABC News reports that Facebook has blocked the app and now Apple has removed it from the Apps store.
It's a shame, too, because that would have been so much easier for those people who are scared to mess around with browser scripts (though Greasemonkey and the script I use are so easy to install that they shouldn't be afraid). And, of course, they would require an iPhone/iPod. But still, I'll bet it would have been popular.
So if you do want to find out who unfriended you (I guess "Defriended" sounds better as an app title, but "Unfriended" has already been put into the dictionary), you'll have to go back to the Greasemonkey script.
But at least you'll still be able to find out!
If you care, that is.
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Interesting post, Dave! I admire people like you who understand the tech side of all this stuff and can decipher it for those of us who fall on the opposite end of the spectrum. Actually, I'm faking a wee bit - I can figure out a lot of IT stuff if I make an effort. I just don't LIKE it, LOL! Therefore, I rely on peeps like you, Jenn and Marty to do the deciphering and then I pester w/ "umm...it did something weird...help me fix it" requests! At any rate, I don't own an iphone or whatever would be necessary to make the above referenced app work - I just found the post interesting from a "hmm...how 'bout that" perspective! Happy Friday!
ReplyDelete~ Dawn
The first thing you have to decide is "do I even care to know who has dropped me?" :)
ReplyDeleteAnother reason that I care is because sometimes it's a mistake/glitch. But if it's not somebody you interact with that often, you may not care.
And of course, the "you" above is the general you. :)
that's interesting Dave. Personally I would like an app or Greasemonkey script to help pick out those people who I added only to play games with are now no longer playing and are therefore cluttering up the feed.
ReplyDeleteNow *that* would be useful.
ReplyDeleteHowever, you can kind of do that yourself. Just set up a group of friends called "Gaming" (or "Mafia" if you're just playing Mafia Wars, for example).
It won't tell you that they've stopped playing, but it will tell you who you should keep an eye on for them no longer playing. You still have to check yourself whether they are or not, and I guess that could get unwieldy if there are a lot of them. But it's a start, anyway.
That might remove about 20% of the work that it takes, but better than nothing! :)
That's another reason I don't play those games. I don't want people on my friends list, seeing my stuff, just because I'm playing a game with them.