It looks like Facebook uses geo targeting based on IP address to find out what country you’re in. They base their ads and various other ‘features’ on this and sometimes you get odd quirks.
During my last trip to Mexico, I dragged along my laptop and connected it to the hotel’s Wifi. Upon logging into Facebook, I got the following message:
¡Bienvenidos a Facebook en Español!
Ahora hispanohablantes en todo el mundo pueden unirse a Facebook. Conéctate co todos tus amigos, en cualquier idioma.
Puedes cambiar tu preferencia de idioma ahora: English
Usa el buscador de amigos para ver si mas de tus amigos se han unido e invita a todos tus amigos hispanohablantes a que se registren.
According to the Facebook Blog, the Spanish language feature was released in January. No word on when geo targeting made its way to Facebook but likely this happened before the whole language thing.
On another trip, I took my laptop to Calgary and again logged into Facebook. From that point on, I started to see Calgary centric ads on Facebook. Now, even though I’m back in Vancouver, it seems that Facebook still thinks I’m somewhere in Alberta. It might be that the IP address I’m currently using isn’t listed in their geo ip database so the last definite location they have me set at is Calgary.
