This evening I’ve been playing around with Facebook’s new iPhone application and it’s definitely a significant upgrade from before. As mentioned on a number of instances, the new application includes events, Facebook page management, full access to the news feed, the ability to create and edit notes, video upload, and more. This iteration is a significant upgrade and given that the application has over 4 million daily active users and 12 million monthly users, this will be a much welcomed upgrade.
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Yesterday Joe Hewitt posted screenshots of the new Facebook iPhone application which is expected to be released in the next couple weeks . What’s most important is the addition of events which was missing from the previous two versions. Joe claims that everybody is asking for push notifications but with thousands of contacts on the site, I’m honestly fine without it! Additionally the most recent version of the news feed will be turned on, making the old iteration of the news feed inaccessible.
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A new iPhone app allows you to record voice messages and post them directly to your Facebook profile. Called FaceMic, this new app takes advantage of the nifty new features of the iPhone OS 3.0 and provides a way for you to post updates, podcasts and other audio to your Facebook news feed. Just as with videos shared on your Facebook profile, the FacMic audio will play directly from your newsfeed.

Once you download the app to your iPhone (it costs 99 cents), there’s no registration necessary. FaceMic is integrated with Facebook Connect, so you can use your Facebook credentials to login. From there, you can pull up the app anytime, and start recording. Once you’re satisfied with the audio message, hit publish and it will appear on your Facebook profile.
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Trapster, the virtual radar detector, has released the latest version of its application for the iPhone, touting support for both Facebook Connect and Twitter. With upgraded support, you can check for local speed traps, or add your own. When you add a speed trap, your activity will be shared on Facebook and/or Twitter, depending on your settings.
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Days after announcing compatibility with Apple’s platform, Facebook’s Connect platform is surely expecting to see a number of applications taking advantage of the new cross-platform opportunities. fbFund winner Kontagent is one of those companies. The social analytics platform is launching its private beta program which looks at metrics pertaining to iPhone and Facebook Connect applications.
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This morning iTunes published a list of the top applications for 2008 and coming in second place was Facebook. The first place winner was Pandora who reported this morning that they hit their two millionth iPhone user yesterday afternoon. Considering that Facebook is following close behind, I can only assume that the application has attracted close to 2 million downloads.
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This morning Zynga announced the launch of their Live Poker application. I had the opportunity to test out the application this morning and I have to say that it’s pretty addictive. The coolest part is that there always appears to be people playing live since the application integrates with Zynga’s existing network across the other social platforms.

I’ve gone ahead and have posted pictures below of the Facebook Connect integration. The process was seamless and it similar to the way Facebook’s original API worked. You simply login, grant access to their external application, and you are off and running. Currently the only component of the integration is the import of your profile photo, but I’d also guess that they track your history as well.

The one thing that has been missing from all the Facebook Connect implementations that I’ve seen so far is integration into my personal feed. My guess is that we will begin to see this as Facebook makes Facebook Connect public for all. For now this was simply a quick and easy way to verify my identity and to have my friends instantly connected through the application.

If you want to try out the first iPhone implementation of Facebook Connect, go download Zynga’s Live Poker application now.

Yesterday I received a message from someone who was frustrated because they could no longer upload photos via email. When they attempted to send from their iPhone they received the following message: “Sorry, we cannot support uploads sent via email. Upload photos from your iPhone with our free application, Facebook for iPhone:
[link to application]“.

My initial response was to ask if he had an iPhone and if he did why he wasn’t using the Facebook application. He admitted that he did but brought up a good point about why Facebook should enable uploading via email even with the availability of an application. The main reason to enable the service was to make it possible to upload the photo to many sites via one upload.

While I can in someway understand Facebook’s position of wanting to drive as many users as possible to install the application, flexibility is key. Even the people that want to upload their images via email most likely have the Facebook application also. The individual that contacted me about uploading photos admitted to having the application but said he just wanted to have the ability to upload to multiple sites.

It’s really not that big of a change and while Facebook may want to lock people into using their application, it’s a fairly restrictive model. Is Facebook going to re-enable upload via email? I’m skeptical of it but it would be the right thing to do. Personally, Facebook Photos is my primary image storage location but many people like to also share via Flickr. How do you store your photos? Did you noticed that Facebook removed iPhone email uploads or do you use the application to upload photos?

Last night Facebook rolled out their highly anticipated new iPhone application and with it a whole slew of new features. Some of the new features includes:

• Access to a complete newsfeed duplicating the functionality currently available on the site. This includes feed item commenting which makes this a mobile competitor to FriendFeed,
• Access to all messages in your inbox,
• Full-access to notifications,
• Tabbed profile design with wall, info, and photos, and
• Search of other users outside of your friends with the ability to request new friendships.

These updates and others bring the majority of Facebook’s functionality to the iPhone. When it comes to mobile social networks, Facebook is proving that they are keeping on the edge with features galore to keep users happy. I for one might start using my iPhone again (instead of my Blackberry) with this new application.

It will be interesting to see if Facebook continues updating their applications on other mobile platforms including Blackberry and Palm or if they decide to put the majority of their efforts into the iPhone. The is a welcomed update and I look forward to what features the company plans on rolling out in the near future.

One thing that I’m most definitely waiting on is the addition of iPhone notifications so that instant messages within Facebook as well as messages in general can provide pop-up notifications. This is much easier then forcing me to open up the application every time I want to check my messages.

If you have a phone filled with lots of contacts, you have probably had the experience where you can’t remember someone that ends up in your phone. If you were obsessive about your contact list you would have entered notes about that individual in Outlook or Salesforce. Unfortunately most people don’t go through this process and as such many names can end up meaningless.

As such the developers of FriendSync have come up with an easy way to sync your contacts on your phone and get their photos from Facebook. As was the same issue with most users of the application according to the reviews on iTunes, the application crashed the first time I tried to use it. Given that I have almost 2,000 friends on Facebook I’m guessing that it’s more challenging to sync all my contacts.

The idea makes a lot of sense though. After numerous tries I have still yet to successfully sync my accounts so I guess this means the application has some serious work to do. So should you go ahead and download FriendSync? Probably not. The application is not ready for primetime but the company continues to develop the application and fix the bug they could definitely attract a lot of users.

Currently the company is charging $1.99 for the application which is a bit ridiculous considering that it doesn’t work. I was willing to pay since it is a business expense but based on the reviews I was expecting it to crash my phone. Thankfully I have an iPhone as a test platform for applications so I wasn’t really concerned.

I’d guess that we’ll see Facebook integrate many of these features in the near future but for now this application has the right idea. If you want to risk your contact list just to test this application go download the FriendSync application. Be warned though, there are people that have had their contact list completely deleted so it may not be the best idea.