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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We’ve been saying for a while that Facebook’s payment platform is a huge opportunity for the company to start making serious cash but there’s one issue with that logic: the majority of users don’t have credit cards. While nobody knows the exact number of Facebook users with credit cards, the most recent estimates are that only around 30 percent of Facebook users 25 percent of internet users have access to a card. The other 75 percent either have a mobile phone, that they can pay with via Boku or Zong, or are out of luck when it comes to making an online transaction.
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Boku is a new service that helps application developers monetize their virtual currencies and is officially launching today. The company was started through the acquisition of Mobilcash and Paymo, two of the leading payment providers for mobile consumers. With less than 20 percent of Facebook users having access to a credit card, mobile payment solutions have become a critical component of application monetization.
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When the Facebook platform launched two years ago, thousands of developers flocked to participate in a land grab opportunity. Two years later mobile platforms appear to be most effective at attracting entrepreneurial teams of application developers. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, has famously emphasized the importance of developers (see video here). Any successful platform needs to attract developers and Facebook has been especially effective at doing so.
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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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Over the past day or so Facebook has begun heavily promoting their mobile services through ads on the site which all link to a new Facebook mobile landing page. They are trying to alert users to the robust set of mobile features that they currently have available including the ability to send messages directly to users, something both Facebook and Twitter have offered since early on. Whether or not users are actually substituting one service for the other (Twitter for Facebook), Facebook is clearly stepping up their communications campaign against the rapidly growing startup.
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Earlier today Facebook turned on a feature to let users receive text updates from public profiles, the same way that Twitter users can receive mobile updates from specified profiles. It’s a small change but for brands it adds a lot of potential. Mobile broadcasting is a huge feature for companies that are looking to reach out to fans directly.
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Today the updated version of Facebook for Blackberry has gone live. I just downloaded the application by visiting mobile.blackberry.com from my Blackberry’s mobile browser. I previously wrote about the updated Facebook Blackberry application back in March and all of the cool new features that come with it. It looks pretty slick and I’m waiting to finish installing it so I can post a video review.
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Facebook has made a huge update today which lets public profile administrators add mobile support to their public profiles. This means public profiles now have the same mobile functionality that Twitter currently provides, including the ability to update status updates and receive mobile updates from public profiles. Users can also choose to be come a fan of a public profile via their phone.
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