Where’s The Full Feature Facebook App?
Jul 30 2008 
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I’ve been keeping up with the news on the amount of downloads Facebook’s app for the iPhone has received. Being an iPhone user and early adopter of Facebook since I’m a college student, it satisfied a certain amount of curiosity I have with Facebook these days. Recently, they’ve reached over 1 million downloads, which is no small feat. While I personally prefer to play Tap Tap Revenge on my iPhone these days, the number of downloads meant nothing to me for one main reason….
The Facebook Website Is Better
I feel cheated by Facebook in so many ways. How do you release a Facebook app with no ability to write on a friend’s wall, the very center of every Facebook profile? While they’ve added this feature since the release, there’s still a ton missing. The Facebook app is not a full featured client for the iPhone. You’re better off adding the website to your homescreen. There are numerous features missing such as editing your profile, reading notifications from pages you’re a fan of, accepting friend request and adding friends. I don’t even know who’s birthday is coming up unless I head to the website. Facebook is very important for remembering birthdays. It’s very limited in its functionality and really only provides you with the the bare basics. You can’t even hold your finger over a friend’s picture to save to your phone (you can’t do this on the website either).
Facebook App
Facebook Website: Friend Request
Calling All Developers
All in all, I think it’s a pathetic attempt by Facebook just to ensure no one took their spot. However, to all developers I say there’s still time and room. I will surely switch for a full featured Facebook client. Right now, I only use the app because I have two Facebook accounts. I use the app for the profile I don’t need to interact with very much as you can’t add more than one profile to the Facebook app to simply switch between one or more accounts. Sigh.
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The shame is that Facebook is so locked-up that it's going to be near impossible for a third-party developer to write an application that will knock the socks off of the official version. I'm afraid we're at the mercy of Facebook for this one…
I have faith they'll shape up. Unfortunately, in the world of technology, an ounce of patience is worth a pound of gold.
I stick with using the website on my iPhone as well. Total disappointment.
I had a similar issue with the iPhone site that LinkedIn has — couldn't accept requests which seemed ridiculous to me. Granted, it's still beta.
It's still ridiculous.
Yes very true. The Facebook API doesn't even let you read someone's wall, let alone write to it. You can't see comments on pictures or read your facebook inbox either.
I thought the Facebook app did more than that.! Snap2Face, the Windows Mobile Facebook app allows you to view friends' walls, accept friend requests, and even save friends' photos to your device. Perhaps eventually more features will be added to all the various applications.
So does that mean you can't check your status/ranks on applications? If that's the case I'm going to think twice about getting it because I'm addicted to the One Minute Mogul App. It has two fun games on it that would be really nice to play on the iphone.
So does that mean you can't check your status/ranks on applications? If that's the case I'm going to think twice about getting it because I'm addicted to the One Minute Mogul App. It has two fun games on it that would be really nice to play on the iphone.
So does that mean you can't check your status/ranks on applications? If that's the case I'm going to think twice about getting it because I'm addicted to the One Minute Mogul App. It has two fun games on it that would be really nice to play on the iphone.