Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) Starts Novel Ad Campaign With New Location Tracking App

Facebook

The United States based online social network Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is poised to take and expand the benefit from the increasing use of social media on mobile gadgets. To feed this appetite company has initiated work to develop a smartphone app that will track the location of users.

People familiar with matter disclosed on the condition of anonymity that the app will be released by mid March. The app would run even the program is not open on a mobile device.  With this new app users will be able to find their friends in nearby locations.

The stock of company reduced 5.5 % to 28.11 US dollars in New York yesterday. On September 4 stock closed at a record low and since then has grown 59 % evidently.

At current time the company records the GPS coordinates of users when they post their photos from mobile devices. However the new app launch will be a step ahead as it will track user locations with the help of the mobile operating system designed by Apple. The app will keep running on background even when phone is not in the use mode.

With the help of this tracking app Facebook will be able to sell ads on the basis of real time locations of users. Facebook currently holds a fleet of nearly 1 billion users worldwide. Company intends to expand profits since the users have increasingly started to access the web service via mobile gadgets.

Several apps including Find My Friends from Apple helps users to find their friends or places of interest by constantly tracking user locations. However these programs have failed to gain popularity due to heavy battery usage and privacy concerns.

For Facebook the new app is expected to raise concerns over users’ privacy over the handling of personal information.

FB shares rose 0.96% to $28.38 in premarket  on Tuesday.


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