Facebook… updates in abundance
Facebook promised an updated version of their iPhone application would be released in September, moving from version 1.1 to 2.0. September is coming to an end, although the application has been released just in time you can’t help but wonder if the release was a little rushed. Maybe keeping to their word was more important than releasing a finished product. To back up this theory, noticeable bugs have been cropping up in the application since launch. Joe Green the lead developer of the app at Facebook said,
“I’ve been hearing some bug reports in 2.0, so I will probably wind up doing a 2.1 release in the short term to address many of these problems.”
The first version of the application was a little bare, Facebook has addressed this by creating a more fully featured application, some improvements include an updated home page featuring a full News Feed plus filtered views of the News Feed, such as Status Updates, Posted Items, Live Feed, and Events. Full photo tagging and posting is now supported. Profiles have tabs and notifications are now on hand. Along with this, searching improvements have been included, you can now search by name adding friends on the go.
Unfortunately this update is iPhone and iPod Touch only, those using Facebook on the mobile web (i.e. non-Apple devices) will see no improvements at this time.
Facebook didn’t just update their iPhone app but also updated their landing page on Monday. Those who have their account automatically signed in may not have spotted this, but the login screen has been redesigned. The home page now exclaims “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you”. TechCrunch believes there may have been a few too many marketing meetings. The home page redesign is one in a long run of updates to the entirety of Facebook. In late July, Facebook designers gave the site a large redesign in effect it was a spring clean. Since then, a Facebook group named ’1,000,000 against the new Facebook layout’ has gained over 2.7 million members. Clearly the group creators underestimated the number of people against the new Facebook design. The developers at Facebook will probably take note when redesigning the site next time around. However, on October 18 and October 19 the members of that particular group will be boycotting Facebook in protest. Facebook has roughly 100 million members, it would be interesting to find out how many of these would join the group if they knew it existed.
If you didn’t already know, Facebook took number one spot globally in May for social networking sites or social utility sites (Facebook lingo), overtaking MySpace according to metrics firm comScore.
