iPad Facebook App Creator Leaves Because App Never Released [u]

I want a Facebook iPad app. I’m betting so do you. Hell, I’m willing to wager that untold thousands of users do — so where is it? We heard word of a near complete iPad app months ago, and July saw an early release accidentally let into the wild, so what happened?

Earlier today, the man behind the app — one Jeff Verkoeyen — published a blog post about it. Soon after publishing he redacted much of the info, and it’s now been so heavily bandwidth killed that there’s nothing left to see, but the original had some interesting information. Verkoeyen’s original post revealed that a feature complete version of the app has been finished since May, and Facebook has just been sitting on it. That’s four months ago, after he worked 80 hours a week for a period in order to rush it out the door.

Verkoeyen was so fed up that he ditched Facebook and went to work for Google, but his update claims that he enjoyed his time with the social network and that while the app was part of his reason for leaving, it certainly wasn’t all of it. He also says the app wasn’t ready for primetime, and still had bugs to be worked out.

TNW thinks it may have been put on hold while Facebook works on an HTML5 interface that wouldn’t need a native iPad app, and TechCrunch thinks that it may have something to do with the relationship between Apple and Facebook, which is sometimes friendly, and sometimes antagonistic.

So no bets as to if this thing will ever see the light of day.

UPDATE: Mashable says the app will be announced/launch at the big iOS 5/iPhone 5 event on October 4th.