Pulse, one of the most popular news reading apps for iPad, just introduced a new feature that marks an important milestone for Alphonso Labs’ creation: Facebook support. Pulse now lets you log in with your Facebook account through Connect, enabling you to check on links shared in your stream, your friends’ status updates and your own Wall. The update is available now, for free.

Pulse has come a long way since its first release in May: first the developers got into some sort of fight with the New York Times and saw their app pulled from the App Store a few days after Steve Jobs mentioned it in a keynote, then they got back in the Store and added support for Posterous built into the app to let users quickly “like” posts coming from RSS sources through Posterous’ infrastructure.

Now the app plugs into Facebook, and it seems like fully embracing Twitter would be the next most logical step for Alphonso Labs. For instance, you can now like and comment on Facebook items right into the app. Think about tweeting and retweeting content fron Pulse. That’d be a nice integration.

Pulse for iPad is still based on a simple navigation scheme which allows you to visually scroll through items, tap on one and go easily back to the stream – which never really disappears, especially when in landscape mode. I believe the app still needs some UI refinements to stand out the way Reeder, Flipboard or the upcoming Tweetmag do, but it’s great to see Alphonso Labs working on constant updates nevertheless.

Pulse is free in the App Store.