By Rosa Golijan

Yesterday it was discovered that Facebook has an iPad app hidden inside its official iPhone app and everyone got excited. The app is gorgeous, well-designed, pleasant to use, and one of the better things Facebook has made in recent times. So why aren't people still giddy about it today?

Because Facebook decided to block the app's access to the social network.

As TechCrunch's MG Siegler first reported, accessing the hidden iPad app required you to go through a slightly elaborate process — you had to download and install the iPhone version, jailbreak your iPad so that it can run software unauthorized by Apple, and tweak a setting. (You can still view The Next Web's step-by-step guide to the process for more details— but it won't exactly do you much good now.)

The reason you had to jump through all these hoops in order to even open the app is pretty obvious: It was not intended for public use. There were several little bugs and it was prone to crashing now and then. But it was still usable and got plenty of people cheering for a Facebook product.

So why's Facebook spoiling our fun? If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that it's because the company is a bit annoyed that its iPad app leaked out before its intended announcement date. Competitors could see it and start tweaking their own products to match Facebook's features, snarky tech writers could diss it based on the pre-release version, and the general public could get confused about the odd process required to access something made by Facebook.

So yes, Facebook's quick ban of the iPad app's access to the social network makes sense, as does the lack of an official statement on the product's existence.

But that doesn't mean we have to be happy about the whole thing.

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Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. She's obsessed with Twitter and loves to be liked on Facebook. Oh, and she can be found on Google+, too.

Rosa Golijan