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Posts tagged with "facebook"

The Obvious Ending Of Instagram’s Tale

Earlier today, Facebook announced it has “agreed” to acquire Instagram, the popular photo sharing service that recently launched an Android app, adding 1 million users in 12 hours to its existing 30 million iPhone users. Here’s Instagram’s announcement, Zuckerberg’s post on Facebook, and some nice numbers for context. Both companies say Instagram “isn’t going away”, though they will be working on expanding the network while keeping the Instagram “we know and love”. If it sounds confusing on a practical level, here’s how we can put this announcement in perspective.

Unlike Flickr, Facebook didn’t miss out on mobile (its iPhone app is the most popular free app on the App Store, ever), but unlike Flickr, Facebook is also many experiences in one. Facebook is the social network, not just the photo network or the bookmark network. Facebook is none of them and all of them at the same time. And as such, Facebook understands that the mobile photo sharing aspect of the social network could be done better.

How better? Instagram better. Even without a business model – something the company has been criticized for not figuring out on day one – Instagram amassed more than 30 million users in roughly 2 years, and it has somehow redefined the way we think of photos shot quickly, modified, and shared on the go on multiple social networks. Photos that don’t require a sign up to be seen, but that do require registered users to “like” and comment. Photos that, even if not of the highest quality, still appeal to the mobile user who wants to touch up his picture of food or a concert with some nice, vintage-like filters. Instagram is fast, intuitive, and free to use for anyone.

Some are already comparing Instagram’s acquisition to Google buying YouTube years ago. I can see the similarities, but there are some differences to keep in mind. Whilst Google’s publicized core product, search, hasn’t directly benefitted from YouTube, Google’s real business, advertising, certainly has in some way. With the Instagram acquisition, I do believe Facebook knows the app is fascinating because it is an app, separate and fun to use, rather than a complicated interface for the big, large network with thousands of features. And I think Facebook could figure out a way to keep the essence of Instagram alive, at least from an interaction perspective, while altering the network in ways to bring tighter integration with Facebook profiles.

The obvious hypothesis is that Instagram could remain a separate product – maybe just rebranded “Instagram by Facebook” – to become the Facebook app for photos. Facebook already has a dedicated Messenger app for messages; they understand that Facebook is so complex and rich now, people want some experiences of it to become standalone, more intuitive products. Photos are perhaps the biggest experience of Facebook – well, aside from the concept of “friending” itself – and Facebook must have figured out mobile users want to be able to shoot, edit, and share in seconds. They also must have noticed how users liked Instagram’s self-contained approach to a feed of photos that tell stories without necessarily using text captions. So perhaps Facebook could leverage its most visual experience yet – the Timeline – to integrate Instagram in a way to ensure photos are automatically saved in a dedicated album, nicely laid out on Facebook.com, but also available as a separate, still Facebook-made feed that only displays photos.

The “Facebook app for photos”, indeed: allow users to easily migrate Instagram accounts to Facebook, turn old Instagram comments and likes into Facebook’s versions of the same things, allow users to enjoy Instagram as a way to a) post photos, b) share them publicly, and c) have a feed of photos from friends or people you follow. It helps that Facebook has already enabled Subscriptions, which could be translated to Instagram followers. The transition should be simple, technically speaking; Facebook could benefit from a product that already has some users that are sharing to Facebook anyway, and that seemingly like the whole idea of filters.

Facebook was already playing around with that idea, too.

But will the transition be simple from a conceptual perspective? As with most popular acquisitions these days, nerds – who tend to be early adopters of social products – react with outrage and disbelief to news like today’s one.

There are five stages of web grief:

  • Disbelief
  • Outrage
  • Data exporting
  • Account deletion
  • “Five best alternatives to [x]”

In two hours, we have already seen all these headlines. You can love or profoundly hate Facebook, and I’m no judge of your criticism for Zuckerberg’s company. I am just trying to make some sense out of this.

There are some people who fell in love with Instagram, and now don’t accept the fact the company “sold out” to Facebook. It’s an understandable sentiment, as Facebook clearly will try to do something to connect its network with Instagram, otherwise they wouldn’t spend $1 billion. These are the people that liked Instagram because it was a social, but intimate, fun experience to share photos. A separate network with very few features, a focus on photos, and a general feel of “independence” that contributed to its rise to 30 millions. We all root for the small guys to succeed in this era of recession and corporate acquisitions. These people don’t simply fear Instagram will lose its “cool” – they are genuinely concerned their data is going to be acquired by Facebook. That’s why Facebook must be careful in how they figure out a migration from Instagram to its large network. But as for the factors above, there’s no doubt Instagram will lose its product independence eventually.

Some people, however, are more judgmental. They seem to think that every business is a mission, and that we’re all in this intricate, complex Web labyrinth to change the world one app at a time. We are not. A very few people, the Steves and Bills of this modern age, are in for the long haul – to change the way we think, and the way we live through technology. But the majority of founders – even the most passionate ones – run businesses as they should: like a business. With real money, not just ideals, to administer at the end of each month. With employees to take care of and investors to respond to. With privacy concerns, legal departments, offices, salaries, support teams, and families waiting at home, wondering why you’re sweating so much for a website anyway. Instagram is a startup with 10 employees, two co-founders, a lot of users, and no business model to start making money. Facebook comes in and offers $1 billion. What is Instagram going to say, no?

I am not saying what Instagram did was “right”. Let’s get real, it’s not about “right” or “wrong”. It’s a business. And if the solution to this business happens to be a huge social network with lots of money in the bank, and possibly a decent existing structure to migrate our product without screwing our users too much, even better. Facebook and Instagram did the obvious thing: they understood they needed each other and got together. The outcome of this choice is more blurry for now, because while Instagram gets the money, Facebook will have to do things right and figure what makes Instagram great, keep it alive, and improve on it while further connecting it to Facebook. I do hope Instagram will be kept around for the long term.

As usual, the users decide. If you are using Instagram on a daily basis, and you are sending all your photos to Facebook, then maybe this announcement won’t change anything, and perhaps you’ll enjoy some new Facebook-only perks too. If you are concerned about privacy, think Instagram has no way to work as a Facebook product, or generally don’t like the idea of a “Facebook owned” service, then you are perfectly justified to delete your account.

But we should stop thinking about web services as experiences bound to stay independent to change the world, because that is a bubble. The obvious ending is what’s best for the business.

Facebook for iPad Gets Retina Graphics

The official Facebook app for iOS, available for free on the App Store, has been updated today to include graphics for the new iPad’s Retina display, and a series of other enhancements. Alongside crisper images for the new display, the 4.1.1 update to the app brings an option to go offline in chat, fixes for the profile picture and names displayed in photo sets, support for more languages, and a number of additional bug fixes to improve the performances of the app. Unfortunately, this version doesn’t sport integration with the Facebook Timeline yet, which, however, was enabled on the iPhone back in December.

You can find Facebook 4.1.1 on the App Store.

Skype 5.4 Beta For Mac Gets Facebook-to-Facebook Video Calling

Back in September Skype, now part of Microsoft, released a new version of its Mac client with direct Facebook integration for Contacts, the News Feed, and text chat. Skype 5.4 was the result of a partnership between Facebook and Skype, which began earlier this year with video calls on Facebook.com based on Skype’s video technology. However, in Skype 5.4 it wasn’t possible for a user to initiate a video call from Skype, and have it forwarded to Facebook.com in the browser.

With a blog post published this morning, Skype announced that the new beta version of Skype 5.4 for Mac has added Facebook-to-Facebook video calling, meaning that, once connected with Facebook, the Skype app will be capable of placing video calls from a Mac to friends online on the Facebook website.

Initiating a Facebook-to-Facebook call from within Skype is quite easy; all you need to do is connect your Skype and Facebook accounts. Then, select a Facebook friend and hit the video call button in Skype- your friend simply picks up the call from Facebook.

Because Facebook’s video calls are based on Skype, the company has managed to interconnect video calls from the desktop app with the new video calling function on Facebook.com. In my tests, the version of Skype I had installed didn’t prompt to update to a new one, and I had to download the new 5.4 beta manually. Users of Skype might find they have version 5.4.0.1217 installed; Skype 5.4 Beta is version 5.4.0.1771.

Other than Facebook video calling, 5.4 beta for Mac brings smoother video rendering, but no interface changes or refinements. Skype has been heavily criticized in the past year for the design choices they made with version 5, and the company even launched a competition to outsource some of the message styles included in the desktop app.

You can download Skype 5.4 beta for Mac here.

Facebook Releases Official iPad App, New Mobile Website

After months of speculation, Facebook released today the first version of its official iPad application, available for free on the App Store. The version available today looks fairly similar to the leaked app posted by TechCrunch earlier this year: there is a navigation sidebar on the left side of the screen to search, open your Facebook profile, check out the News Feed, Messages, Events, Friends and more. An upper toolbar gives you access to friend requests, messages and notifications, whilst Chat has been integrated in a right hand vertical panel. Judging from a first test, it appears what we wrote back in July still holds true for the final Facebook iPad app:

Facebook for iPad uses a concept not too dissimilar from Twitter’s iPad app — rather than displaying all content vertically, the app heavily relies on horizontal navigation to access various Facebook sections, the news feed, chats, liked posts, and so forth. For instance, a sidebar on the left contains tabs below your main profile to open your News Feed, Messages, Events, Places, Friends, and Photos. In the same sidebar, there are links to jump to the groups you’re subscribed to — it almost appears as Facebook wants to put the focus on Groups as much as Google gave Circles, its friend-organization tool, a huge role in Google+. There are two top bars in the middle panel: one has buttons to upload photos from your iPad’s camera and library, the other two are associated with a regular status update and check-ins. In the blue toolbar, the app has a series of additional icons to open the friend requests panel, messages, and notifications — this looks very similar to Facebook on the desktop, and the design is very distant from Facebook’s implementation on the iPhone. There is also a search function in the app, though it’s been placed at the top of the sidebar, rather than the toolbar.

We’ll have a more detailed look at Facebook’s iPad client as we get to play with it in the next few hours. Another prominent feature of today’s Facebook’s releases is app discovery and integration with mobile browsers – basically what used to be called Project Spartan in the weeks leading up to the iPad app’s release. The Facebook app now allows users to tap on links shared on the News Feed by specific apps, like Words with Friends, and if the app is already installed on the device and recognized by Facebook, it’ll launch it. If the app isn’t installed but available on the App Store, Facebook will forward the link to the App Store; if no App Store version is available, Facebook will try to load a new HTML5 version as part of a partnership with several developers to bring Facebook apps to mobile browsers. Previously, many Facebook apps had to be written in Flash to run on Facebook’s website, and this limitation made them incompatible with Apple’s devices and Safari browser, which don’t support Flash. AllThingsD shares more information on this new web initiative from Facebook:

The combined native and Web app experience is only available on iOS for now. On Android and other phones with Web browsers, users will default to the Web experience. Facebook CTO Bret Taylor told AllThingsD today that Facebook is also working on an update to its native Android application.

On the downside, there’s one place Facebook wasn’t able to negotiate a consistent experience for users: payments. This was a major sticking point in ongoing discussions with Apple, as I’d written last week. Facebook Credits can’t be used to pay for virtual goods within in native iOS apps or mobile Web apps running within a Facebook app on iOS. Instead, users will have to buy separate in-app currency through Apple’s own in-app payment system.

Facebook notes that there are some missing features from its iPad client such as the ticker, a recently launched interface to access your friends’ recent activity from a sidebar on Facebook’s website. Facebook says the ticker couldn’t be implemented on the iPad due to time constraints and limited real screen estate. For this first release, Facebook is putting the focus on photos, available in high-res thanks to the iPad’s screen, games and simplified navigation, which allows you to switch between posts, friends updates and messages with a few taps through the iPad’s interface.

The new Facebook mobile interface is also live through Safari on iOS; the mobile website has received several updates detailed in this blog post, and it borrows heavily from UI elements of the iPad app released today, with a toolbar for friend requests, messages and notifications, and “bookmarks” on the left to search, open your profile, pages, News Feed, and so forth.

With the new Requests dialog for mobile, users can invite their friends to your app. Friends can receive requests anywhere that your app is supported. For example, if a user plays a move in a game on Facebook.com, their friend can respond from her iPhone. As with bookmarks, users will tap the notification and land directly on the mobile version of your app, whether it is a native iOS app or a mobile web app.

Navigation on the new mobile website has been dramatically improved with this update – switching between sections doesn’t reload the entire webpage and it makes for a faster, more pleasant mobile browsing experience. An obvious advantage of the native Facebook apps remains camera access and chat, which the mobile web version still can’t provide through Safari and other mobile browsers.

You can find Facebook for iPad here, and check out Facebook’s new mobile web view at m.facebook.com.

Update: I’ve been playing with the Facebook iPad app, and I’m fairly impressed with how the final version turned out to be – clearly, the app that leaked this summer was a development build that wasn’t ready for primetime. The News Feed design is clean and simple, but unfortunately it’s also the only section that lagged a bit in performances on my iPad 2 with iOS 5: the News Feed’s scrolling isn’t terribly smooth, certainly not as fluid as scrolling through a user’s profile, the Messages window or a Facebook page. I assume Facebook will make changes in the next few weeks to make the News Feed as smooth as possible. Another thing I didn’t particularly like is the Settings window, which isn’t iPad optimized and looks strange on the big screen.

But everything else is quite impressive in this first iPad app. You can have chat conversations with multiple contacts as you’d normally do, and keep the conversations going either by using the Chat sidebar or the unified Messages view. When a contact pings you in Chat, Facebook brings him/her at the top of the list so you can easily respond; unlike Facebook.com, chats aren’t displayed as open “tabs” along the bottom – they’re listed at the top of the Chat sidebar and you can go back and forth between them by tapping on them.

It appears Facebook has given much importance to gestures in this iPad release: you can swipe to open the left sidebar (the one that displays Search, Favorites, Apps and Pages) and swipe to navigate back to previous screens. For instance, you can open your profile from the News Feed, check out something on your profile, then swipe back to the News Feed. Animations are quite fast and responsive. Profiles’ design is extremely simple, with tabs on the left to access the Wall, Info screen, Photos and Friends. These last two items are presented with a typical iPad grid interface, and you can pinch to open photos (or swipe to navigate between them in full-screen). You can add a new friend from the Profile view or, if you’re already friends with someone, tap on the action button in the upper right corner to Send a Message, Chat, Poke and Unfriend. While on a friend’s profile, you can obviously like and comment on posts too, and the buttons to perform such actions have been moved into a single + icon next to each post.

The most visible interface elements of the new Facebook app are the sidebar and toolbar. The upper toolbar, just like Facebook’s website, contains buttons to see Friend requests, messages and notifications. While the updated Facebook mobile website had to recreate Apple’s popover menus inside Mobile Safari, Facebook for iPad features native popover menus to check out requests and notifications; Facebook developers went as far as adding popover-based interaction for posting a new status update (with options to tag friends, insert location, attach a photo or video, and control privacy settings). Popovers work nicely in offering a quick glance at what’s new in your Facebook account, and a little red badge will sit next to them for a missed notification or friend request. When you tap on a notification for someone that liked or commented on a post of yours, Facebook won’t take you to a single page for that comment thread – it’ll open a sidebar allowing you to comment back. Messages, too, when accessed from the upper toolbar won’t launch a dedicated page – they’ll enable you to reply from within the popover itself. It’s a nice touch that simplifies navigation by eliminating the need of constantly swiping through pages, and a huge advantage over the mobile website (which, as you can guess, doesn’t let you reply inside popovers like the iPad app – it’ll quickly reload a new page). Another nice addition to the Messages’ popover menu is the action button that lets you open a thread in the full Messages view, archive it, mark it as spam or unread. The main sidebar on the left, too, provides quick access to often-used Facebook sections with a few taps. Your friends, News Feed, Messages and Nearby check-ins will be listed here if you want to check them out. But the new addition in this 4.0 release is the aforementioned app discovery: apps that have been connected with your Facebook account will show up as entries in the Apps section of the sidebar. Tapping on these apps will launch them if already installed on the device, or open the App Store. Which brings me to the also-updated Facebook app for iPhone.

Facebook for iPhone has received a massive overhaul that makes the app look a bit like the iPad version and new mobile website (screenshots below). Unlike the mobile website, however, items in the top toolbar won’t open in popover menus: Facebook for iPhone loads new full-screen windows for them, and I assume it’s because popovers are native to the iPad’s SDK, not the iPhone’s. The fact that Facebook was able to implement popovers on the iPhone’s web UI clearly shows the different kind of control the web gives Facebook. However, small technical differences aside, Facebook 4.0 on the iPhone looks very similar to its web counterpart. The sidebar is the same, basic navigation concepts are the same, and apps are listed in the sidebar. And because on my iPhone I have some third-party apps that are connected to Facebook, I was able to launch them directly from the iPhone app’s new sidebar. I tapped on Instagram and Shazam, and Facebook for iPhone launched them directly. Other apps that weren’t installed forced Facebook to open the App Store link instead.

Overall, I have the feeling Facebook did something very good this time. The technologies used in the mobile website make for a better experience and unify the Facebook user interface across devices; the new iOS app is more polished, faster to navigate, and it’s got the same obvious perks like chat and camera access. The iPad app is especially easy to use thanks to gestures and the bigger screen, which makes everything more readable and “organized”. The iOS app could still use some tweaks (especially in scrolling the News Feed), but I believe version 4.0 is a huge step forward for Facebook, and the mobile interface is a platform we should keep an eye on in the next months.

Find a gallery of screenshots below.

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The Strenuous Relationship Between Apple And Facebook

It’s been known that Apple and Facebook have had a strenuous relationship over the past year and a half or so - with the debacle of iTunes Ping being the key event known to the public over which the companies clashed. Mashable has a nice scoop today that delves deeper into the rift between the two companies and how things seemed to have taken a positive turn in recent months.

According to Mashable’s sources, Apple approached Facebook over fully integrating Facebook into iOS 4 as well as making their own Facebook app — apparently “lacking confidence in Facebook’s ability to build a great application”. Disagreements arose and negotiations broke down, Apple canned most of the Facebook integration, except Ping which they didn’t fully inform Facebook of — this then led to Facebook banning Apple from the APIs soon after it launched.

Three months ago Steve Jobs supposedly visited Facebook to talk with Mark Zuckerberg about a Facebook iPad app. Jobs learnt that Facebook was working with HP to release a native webOS app and according to Mashable’s sources, Jobs was furious about it. Zuckerberg tried to appease Jobs by pulling the app, but Jon Rubenstien of HP’s webOS division refused. Nonetheless the app wasn’t perfect when released and was restricted because Facebook pulled certain APIs, just as it had done with Ping in the previous year.

Was Facebook playing both sides? Absolutely, says a source close to HP. Facebook was made aware of the application and device integrations. The company knew what was coming, changed its tune right before release — and only did so to appease Apple. For its part, HP was furious. It had hoped the Facebook application would help differentiate the TouchPad from other tablets on the market.

Since then it appears Facebook and Apple have mended their relationship. As reported earlier this week from MG Siegler of TechCrunch, Apple and Facebook have been working together on a Facebook iPad app and on an HTML5 web app platform (Project Spartan) and could well be sharing the stage at Tuesday’s iPhone event to launch the products. Just as Siegler mentioned, Mashable notes that this collaboration seems to stem from the fact that they both share a common enemy: Google.

Be sure to jump over to Mashable and read their full article, they mention other interesting snippets of information and do a great job of putting together the juicy jigsaw puzzle that is the Facebook and Apple relationship.

[Via Mashable]

 

Facebook’s iPad App And Project Spartan Likely To Launch Next Week, Possibly At Apple’s Event

Back in July TechCrunch revealed that Facebook had already developed an iPad app that was live inside the iPhone app. It seemed feature complete, which has confused many as to why Facebook has taken so long to launch it — they didn’t even launch it at last week’s f8 conference. If MG Siegler of TechCrunch is correct (which he has been for many Facebook scoops this year), it has been waiting on another of Facebook’s Project Spartan and various negotiations with Apple - as was reported this week.

Earlier today another TechCrunch writer, Alexia Tsotsis found some screenshots of Project Spartan (see above) which MG Siegler believes to be the real thing. He writes this morning that “the planets are aligning” and that the Facebook iPad app and Project Spartan (of which both have seen delays and delayed each other) will launch next week.

According to him Apple has been involved with both projects and that the two companies have been collaborating on both projects. His sources note that the two Facebook projects may launch at next week’s Apple event (Mashable also suggests this), potentially as part of a demonstration that shows off improved HTML5 support on iOS. But if that arrangement falls through Facebook will apparently reveal the two projects during a Monday event.

But make no mistake, the relationship between the two companies is tenuous at best. Both know that they’d probably be better of working together, but both also believe that they don’t actually need each other. Hence, the dancing we’ve been seeing and hearing about. The two are frenemies. But the launch of Google+ has made the common enemy very clear…

Project Spartan is an HTML5-based development and distribution platform that’s being built with Mobile Safari for iOS in mind. When MG Siegler first posted about Project Spartan in mid-June, he described the purpose of it as:

Facebook will never admit this, but those familiar with the project believe the intention is very clear: to use Apple’s own devices against them to break the stranglehold they have on mobile app distribution. With nearly 700 million users, Facebook is certainly in the position to challenge the almighty App Store distribution mechanism. But they need to be able to do so on Apple’s devices which make up a key chunk of the market.

[Via TechCrunch]

Facebook iPad App “Feature Complete” Since May, Apple and Facebook Negotiating Over HTML5 Platform?

In a blog post published earlier today, former Facebook engineer Jeff Verkoeyen explained that among the reasons behind his decision to leave Facebook for Google there was some sort of frustration for the release of Facebook’s official iPad app. The app, leaked earlier this year as Facebook buried its code inside the iPhone app, has been apparently feature complete since May but, as Verkoeyen clarifies to The Next Web, there were still bugs and issues to iron out with the software. The app was pushed back several times, but Verkoeyen says that he enjoyed his time working at Facebook.

He says that there were definitely bugs and issues with the app that still needed working out. Although his post indicated that the development of the app slowed after his initial push in May, he says that it is still a ‘continually evolving’ app. Verkoeyen wanted to stress the fact that ‘feature complete’ and ‘complete’ are two very different concepts.

MG Siegler, who originally leaked the Facebook iPad app months ago, briefly chimes in to suggest that the app might have been delayed multiple times because of ongoing negotiations between Apple and Facebook. Such negotiations are said to include a deal for a collaboration between the two companies on Spartan, Facebook’s rumored new HTML5 platform that will allow developers to write Facebook apps and games that run in the browser.

There isn’t much to go on here just yet, but we’ve been hearing that Facebook and Apple may now be working together on the HTML5 project. Maybe it’s because Apple hates Google that much, or maybe it’s because they realize that HTML5 apps are still no real threat to the native app movement. Or maybe they want Facebook’s wildly popular social games to run inside of Facebook’s apps — including the iPad app. If this is indeed the case, negotiations may still be underway.

Project Spartan has been in the rumors for months now, and some initially believed it would be formally introduced – alongside the iPad app – at the f8 conference last week. Spartan, an HTML5-based development platform deeply tied into Facebook’s API and payment system, was also regarded as Facebook’s answer to Apple’s App Store’s dominance in the mobile space – by targeting iOS browsers in its initial release, Spartan could offer an interesting alternative for developers looking to write mobile apps integrated with Facebook.

A collaboration between Facebook and Apple would also result interesting, of course, considering Apple’s support for Twitter in its upcoming iOS 5. A video showing an internal iOS 4 build showed that Apple had at least internally tested direct integration of Facebook into its iPhone software, but the feature never made it to iOS 4’s public release. It’s been widely speculated that Apple and Facebook couldn’t come to an agreement because of Facebook’s terms – Apple was even forced to pull Facebook integration from its music-based social network, Ping, at the last minute.

One last piece of information comes from Robert Scoble, who suggested last week Facebook was saving its iPad app announcement for October 4th, the day Apple is expected to hold its iPhone 5 keynote in Cupertino.

Update: Ben Parr at Mashable reports the Facebook iPad app and a new version of the iPhone client will be unveiled at Apple’s next keynote, as Scoble suggested last week. Parr reports Apple and Facebook share a common “goal” (bring down Google, it seems) and he corroborates MG Siegler’s report earlier today – Facebook’s “Project Spartan” HTML5 platform may see Apple’s involvement to allow developers to create better apps for mobile browsers.

Facebook will launch its long-awaited iPad app at Apple’s iPhone 5 launch event on Oct. 4, Mashable has learned. In addition to the iPad app, Facebook is also expected to release a revamped version of its iPhone app and may unveil an HTML5-based mobile app marketplace.

If Parr’s sources are correct (he was given a preview of Facebook’s f8 announcements last week, and wrote that Facebook would “profoundly change” a day before the conference), we may see the long-awaited Facebook iPad app on Tuesday, October 4th.

Skype for Mac Beta Gets Facebook Integration

With a blog post published a few minutes ago, Skype has announced a new beta version of its desktop client for OS X, which adds Facebook integration for chat, news feed, and friends’ posts. The new Skype for Mac 5.4, available for download here, allows users to connect with Facebook directly within the app – without having to open Facebook’s website – to start chatting with Facebook friends, like their posts, or read and update the News Feed.

Once authenticated with Facebook in-app, Skype 5.4 will display an additional Facebook tab in the Contacts view, enabling you to filter the buddy list down to only people who are available for IM through Facebook. The cross-platform IM solution seems pretty reliable in this regard, in that I was able to easily find a Facebook friend, and start chatting with her while I was using Skype 5.4 for Mac. She received my messages correctly on Facebook’s website. When another friend tried to contact me on Facebook via chat, a new message showed up in Skype’s sidebar next to his name (the Mac version of Skype also supports Growl notifications).

Similarly, I was able to read posts from my news feed, like them, and even post a status update using Skype 5.4.

Skype has also confirmed this release brings a new advertising platform to the app, although I haven’t been able to personally verify this yet:

We are also introducing an advertising platform in this new release, but if you are a paying Skype consumer or have Skype Credit, you won’t see any display ads; similar to the model that is currently being used in our Skype for Windows client.

Skype 5.4 beta for Mac can be downloaded here. After Microsoft’s acquisition, the company recently brought HD video calling to the Mac with version 5.3, and released a native client for the iPad.

Facebook for iPhone 3.5 Released With New Sharing Options, Wall Design

A major update to the official Facebook app for iPhone was released earlier today, adding new sharing options from the compose screen and privacy controls that match the options set on Facebook’s website. First off, Facebook 3.5 brings a new design for Profile and Group walls; the app appears to be more streamlined and in line with Facebook’s recent changes to its web UI.

Perhaps more importantly, Facebook for iPhone now lets you tag friends and places in posts, and share links from a web view opened through Facebook. The updated compose screen has got buttons to add friends from a list (and even search), tag a place, or add a new photo or video. As for sharing links, Facebook now lets you open a webpage in-app, and instantly reshare it (with an optional comment) with your friends. When sharing a webpage from a web view, tapping on its link in the compose screen will enable you to remove the link entirely, or just its thumbnail.

Facebook 3.5 also comes with bug fixes, as mentioned in the changelog:

  • Improved Notifications speed
  • Fixed a number of Chat bugs
  • Made it easier to select filters in News Feed
  • Fixed a bug with the Notifications bar disappearing
  • Fixed a number of Photos bugs
  • Improved performance and stability overall

An official iPad app from Facebook is expected to be officially unveiled soon, likely at the upcoming f8 conference on September 22. The iPad client was discovered inside the iPhone application back in July, although it appears the latest version removes iPad elements, thus making it impossible for Cydia tweaks like FaceForward to force-enable the yet unofficial iPad app.

Facebook for iPhone is a free download on the App Store.