Facebook thinks Places only exist in the US
CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Places today. We’ve known this has been in the pipeline for some time now but today the details were revealed. Facebook places allow users to check-in at different locations and share that with their friends. So basically Facebook is adding only one new piece of functionality that’s not already available with other services. This is the ability to check-in not only yourself, but also other friends that either can’t be bothered themselves or don’t have compatible devices. What is most compelling about Facebook offering location is that it’s Facebook. 500 million people and pretty much everyone you know is already on Facebook, unlike early location-service adopters.
What was originally thought to be the death of existing location-based services like Facebook and Gowalla, turned out to be very different. Rather than the 500 pound gorilla squash competition like a bug, they’ve decided to partner with Foursquare, Gowalla and Yelp. Now admittedly these services didn’t really have much of a choice, it was partner or be put out of business. Facebook also announced an API for Facebook Places that allows for 3rd parties (or partners) to utilise location information coming from Facebook.
Image credit: Tech Crunch
All this is great except for the fact that its only launching in the United States. Worse yet, Facebook don’t have any timeline for an international release. Even more temptatious is the release of an update iPhone application complete with the Places menu option that results in a disappointing “This feature will be available in your region soon. Thankyou for your patience”. Frankly my patience with US-only launches is running out.
We’re living in an international marketplace and online companies are operating in it, yet we continue to put up these false walls at a nations borders. Understandably technology rollouts need to be tested, but this relates to volume, not geography. After the revelation that there’s no roadmap for an international rollout, my interest in the announcement died.
More info @ http://www.facebook.com/places/
Facebook chat returns
After the privacy scare last week, Facebook disabled their chat feature. The “Preview My Profile” feature allowed some users Facebook chat sessions be able to be seen by others.
Good news for FB addicts, Facebook has re-enabled this feature. Go get your chat on.
Review: Sobees for Facebook
While we continue to wait for an official Facebook iPad application, a number of developers are taking it upon themselves to create Facebook iPad applications. Sobees is the latest app to do just that, it turns out it’s a pretty nice. 
Home screen
After launching the app, you’ll land at the Home screen. This is a dashboard into your contacts latest Facebook updates. The screen is divided into Latest Updates, Breaking News, Latest Images, Links and Video. Using this as an additional monitor while working on your computer works quite well. The app auto-updates periodically letting you keen an eye on Facebook updates while remaining productive.
People
The People screen gives you an easy way to browse through your friends profiles. The page loads in thumbnails of your friends drawn from their current Facebook profile picture. This is a very nice, visual way to browse your friends list, actually this does a better job of presenting friends than Facebook.com.
Photos
To check out your friends photos, just hit the Photos screen. Probably my biggest issue with this app is the fact you can get a single aggregated stream of photos from your friends ordered by date and time. Hopefully this gets added in the future.
Events
The events page shows a present icon on every day that has on or more events on. Your contacts birthdays are added automatically, again this is a feature that’s actually better than the Facebook website. When you select a day with an event on, a description of each event is shown at the bottom of the screen. I do think having the ability to RSVP to events right from the app would be valuable.
Profile
Naturally the Profile screen shows your latest tweets, profile picture and information, as well as a mini-scrollable thumbnail list of your friends.
From any screen of the application you can update your status by clicking on the ‘Update your states’ icon in the top right hand corner.
Overall Sobees for Facebook is a nice application, providing the best interface to Facebook on the iPad other than going to Facebook.com in Safari. The application doesn’t support notifications, but you can like and comment on friends’ updates. That said once the official Facebook app arrives, I’m likely to jump ship for more functionality, at least they have a benchmark now.
More @ Sobees
Your Face, getting bigger. Facebook ads Bigger Photos – Finally!
In a new post on the Facebook blog, Facebook have announced they will be rolling out a new updated photo size for ‘better viewing’.
Old photo size (left) compared to the new size. (Note that actual photos are larger; this shows scale only.)
There is a caveat for external applications that upload photos to Facebook (i.e. Windows Live Photo Grallery, iPhoto etc).
All uploads on Facebook.com will support the new photo size, but uploads made from some external applications may continue to use the previous size.
This will likely be remedied with an update to the application or plugin.
Ultimately this is a good thing, the limited photo size has been a contentious issue for many, particularly photographers eager to show off their work. Sites like Flickr allow photos to be uploaded and viewed in a variety of sizes including full resolution.
Facebook hits 400 Million active users
Well you sure like your facebook don’t you. After the launch of their (first) 2010 UI redesign, Facebook has just made the announcement they have reached 400 Million Active Users. A phenomenal number, and phenomenal growth, with the 350 million announcement only a few months back.
The next milestone is surely the big half a billion users, could it happen in 2010 ?
More @ Facebook.
Facebook launches new UI
Continuing along the never-ending quest for perfection, the Facebook UI has been changed again. The main change is a restructuring of the top navigation bar. Yes people it’s a change, so grab your pitchforks and scream to the hills, but spend some time with it, you’ll find just like last time, you can actually adjust pretty quickly.
Here’s a handy guide as to what’s new in the update. 
Learn more about it @ Facebook
Facebook iPhone app pushes to 3.1
Overnight one of the most heavily used iPhone apps – Facebook was updated. Version 3.1 now includes push notifications and contact sync.
Push Notifications – This solves the annoying problem of having to launch the app just to see if there are any new updates. Those popular people who get tonnes of updates may wanna turn this off, it’ll get annoying pretty quickly. But if your one of those ADD kids who have to stay on top of everything at every second, then this is a great new feature.
Contact Sync – Like many people I sync my iPhone’s contacts with gmail. There’s a lot of crossover between that list of contacts and my friends on Facebook. The new Facebook contact sync, works as you’d expect. Combining data from fracebook into your contact list. If you don’t have a picture for your contact, it’ll pull from your friend’s current Facebook profile photo, it’ll also add a website link into your contact which works in a unique way. The link is a specially formatted URL e.g. fb://profile/profilenumber – Pressing on this link doesn’t launch Safari, but rather the Facebook app, directly to the profile page of the associated friend. Very cool indeed.
Facebook v3.1 iPhone app is available from the app store now. Note: I didn’t see listed as an update, had to search Facebook in the App Store.
