The Future of the Facebook iPhone App, According to the Man Who Made It
Apple approved the first update to the Facebook app on the iPhone in almost a year yesterday and it was a huge hit. The app was built by Joe Hewitt, whose previous work includes the co-creation of Firefox with Blake Ross. With 12 million downloads, Facebook's app was the 2nd most popular free app on the iPhone platform in 2008 behind Pandora.
I spoke with Hewitt yesterday on the BadHairDay podcast and the following are three three features he identified as next steps on the app's roadmap.
Contact list synchronization between your Facebook friends list and your phone's contact list. "It's a Terms of Service thing more than a technical limitation," Hewitt said.
Push notifications. "We are working on push," Hewitt said last night. "I plan to have it in the next major update, the 3.1. It will be the same kind of notifications you get on the website. I probably won't right off the bat give you chat notifications. If you've ever used Facebook's SMS notifications, you can have pretty granular control and it will be the same level of notification in terms of whose notifications you see and what categories you see."
Saved, site-wide search. On the Facebook website you can now search across public updates and other items beyond just friends and pages. You can't do that on the mobile app yet. "I hope but I can't promise to get that into the 3.1 update," Hewitt said. "We're still working on getting that into the API. I'm also hoping to let you save a search to your home screen."
Saved search icons on the beautiful new home screen? Granular control over push notification delivery so you can get immediate news of just your most important updates? Automatic contact synching so your friends' Facebook avatars appear when they call you on the phone?
Those sound like great features. We're excited to see them implemented with the same attention to user experience that this latest update showed.
What would you like to see on the roadmap of the Facebook app on the iPhone?
Share
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
would love to have inline video playback support.
Frank, I noticed on Twitter yesterday that Joe said the lack of video playback in the app broke his heart. He hears ya, buddy!
push notifications would be just dandy!
I would love my events to have the correct date and time and be listed in chronological order...
I'm bummed v3.0 doesn't support posting links.
I would love to see "Support for Groups" added e.g. like browsing the groups we are in.
Better video support, ReadItLater support, push (would be huge!), some better tools to manage group and fan pages and maybe in app purchase for gifts!
Groups and discussion boards, thanks. Doable right now but apparently using an embedded browser... not cool, even though better than nothing.
This is off topic, but he looks a lot like Mac from "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia."
First let me state that I love the new app. I now check Facebook daily as soon as I'm done with Twitter on my iPhone. Joe has done an impressive job with the app update and it has been well worth the wait. Great job!
Now for the suggestions:
I second video support and uploading from the app.
I'd also like to see the option to delete a friend. You can add one but not remove one.
Also a suggested improvement for Notes is to include a way to see friend's notes and not just mine, but without goiging through my newsfeed. Just a separate section within Notes, similar to the layout of Search in the new app, where I can find my notes, tagged notes, and friend's notes and also be able to search through them.
"The app was built by Joe Hewitt, whose previous work includes the co-creation of Firefox with Blake Ross. With 12 million downloads, Facebook's app was the 2nd most popular free app on the iPhone platform in 2008 behind Pandora."
Posted by: Corvida
|
August 29, 2009 5:50 AM
Too few people in the field earn big money, this is the cons of such app industry.
Groups, before anything else... please. I do most of my Facebook stuff in Groups, so the iPhone app is next to useless for me as it is.
@Jason: I was thinking he looked more like Billy Zane in Dead Calm
I would like to see 'Lists' available for bookmarking instead of just individuals as I use lists to follow friends activities..
been using friend lists alot lately, the ability to push a user to a particular list would be useful for me....at the moment this can only be managed online
Yep, read and write to groups - I'm an admin to over 50,000 members and it drives me crazy not being able to access groups with the app
Perhaps virtual tour planner ?
would like to see push for chat become more of a priority. This could be the great SMS disrupter. JH would become legendary =]
Groups! Groups! Groups!
DO ME A BIG FAVOUR GO ON FACE BOOK OR AND OTHER LINKS AND ASK EVERYONE SUPPORT HIM AND LEAVE HIM A EMAIL ON THE SITE ........WANT TO HELP HIM ?
WOULD YOU BURN YOUR HANDS OFF FOR PEACE OF MIND ?
David McCollum, a remarkable man with a remarkable story. It’s a very moving, intimate and powerful show. As David shares his journey, we get a real insight into his past world, his long struggle with addiction and how he turned his life around. David has been to the edge and back, and his extraordinary story will be an inspiration to all.
Real lives, real people, real issues… http://www.inexcess.tv/?p=4993&v=1
Video capabilities would be great too, I'd rather have that then search or push. The contact list is pretty cool though, shows where Facebook has their eyes set.
The Future of the Facebook iPhone App, According to the Man Who Made It. (is on top of techmeme, sweet) http://c.oy.ly/z3it [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/3629275767]
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
|
September 1, 2009 5:36 PM
Missing the Live Feed features on the new app! No longer do you see when friends add friends, join groups, etc... I wish I could re-install version 2.5 somehow!! I'm not using my Facebook nearly as much as I used to before the Update!
I tried the latest version and must say it has lots of improvement .. Though One big feature which latest version miss is profile information editing..I hope they will add this in upcoming version
Right now if you are chatting with someone and then go out of the facebook app, you cannot receive their chat messages. Would it be possible to queue the missed messages so that when you come back into the app you see what you missed? Or an alternative would be to have push alerts for the chat messages. Right now I think the chat is nice but sometimes unreliable because you do not know if you are missing someone's message.
Groups please! The app is awesome but would be even better with support for Facebook Groups!
Groups. Please. Soon. Thanks.
Posted by: https://creativecommons.net/mayeski/
|
September 29, 2009 12:50 PM
groups
groups
groups
support for groups plz
From all the other posts, I see that I wasn't missing the secret about accessing groups. Good.
Excellent work!
This is my first visit to your website, and though I've missed the date to enter your blog into that competition (by 23 hours!), I've bookmarked you for next year (you've got my vote!!). :-)
I am trying to get a closed group I have created on Facebook to show up in my facebook iphone app, when I am looking to add more to the profile view onthe app.
The new group only contains few memebers (12) and is kept as a secret group. Could that be the reason, that there are to few members or/and that the group is secret?
OR could it be because it is only possible to add fan pages and not groups?
Hope you can help me.
Best regards
Thomas
Have just seen fromthe other posts, that it isnt possible to access groups.
I agree with the rest, that it is a pivotal point to create :-).
Whats the timeline to get it implemented?
Thank you
Thomas
correct time on posts and updates. please fix this bug
I'd like to see Facebook backoff. They are becoming too intrusive. I just deleted the Facebook app from my iPhone. Bummer, but I don't want them fishing around my phone for my contact photos or anything else. I can see the day coming when I will leave Facebook all together.
Mark Zuckerberg is premature when when he says the expectation of privacy is not a social norm. I, for one, still value privacy--even more than I value Facebook (and I like Facebook).