Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, iPhone
Facebook launches iPhone portal
Tossing their hat into a quickly expanding ring, Facebook has launched a powerful portal designed specifically for the iPhone (http://iphone.facebook.com). Offering quick access to key Facebook areas and tools, the entire UI is built to mimic the increasingly popular iPod/iPhone 'slide right' approach whenever you drill down into portions of the site. While it seems very usable, even over EDGE, I am still a bit disappointed about some missing features. The ability to join a group, for example, is restricted to desktop computers; you can't join a group you saw some friends join on your iPhone.
Aside from those minor complaints though, this is a very impressive web app that I'm sure will have iPhone-toting Facebook junkies
[via Mashable]
Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jokerairwick said 11:39AM on 8-15-2007
Is there a way to jump to the bottom of the page on the iPhone while browsing sites?
Because when I try to read my inbox messages, I found it very annoying that I need to go through everything before I get to the bottom. Which is kinda hard and annoying since the page is really really long...
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Joey Lange said 11:49AM on 8-15-2007
David, you're from Brookfield?
I'm from Racine!
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Greg Perkins said 12:07PM on 8-15-2007
That's even fun to use on my 17" MBP, and the big bonus is that there are NO ADS!!!!
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David Chartier said 12:10PM on 8-15-2007
Joey: Born and raised baby! Lived in Brookfield for 20 years, with the last two going to school up at Stout before I moved to CO with some friends.
How funny; small world.
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Samatva said 12:16PM on 8-15-2007
What hapened to "not the watered-down Internet" from the iPhone ads? Couldn't facebook instead apply some universal design principles?
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David Chartier said 12:35PM on 8-15-2007
#5: That's a good question, but I think some sites work better than others when viewed - and more importantly: used - on the iPhone's 3.5-inch 'just the internet' screen. Reading news articles and text, sure - it's great. But on a complex site like Facebook where there's lots of buttons, rich content that's pulling in from other sites and communities... things get messy. Plus, 'just the internet' feels like you're using 'just a modem' when out 'n about and EDGE is your only data source. These customized mobile sites are the perfect way to get at just what you need when on the go.
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Summerlin LV said 1:10PM on 8-15-2007
A good one for youz:
http://albumoftheday.com/facebook/
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punkassjim said 1:55PM on 8-15-2007
#5: I think David hit the nail on the head, but I just wanted to remind you that you can still just go to facebook.com on your iPhone, and get the site in its not-watered-down glory. That's what I've been doing for weeks.
I'm not a facebook freak like some folks, but I've been trying to kinda get into it so I can migrate off of myspace. And when I got the iPhone, I bookmarked their old mobile portal, m.facebook.com. And...it...sucked.
This new mobile portal is a breath of fresh air, and likely to help me start using facebook more. Many thanks to the facebook people for putting time and thought into it.
Now my wish list:
1. I want mobile safari to get an "RSS" button like desktop safari has
2. I want to be able to bookmark RSS feeds from my iPhone
3. I want my RSS bookmarks to show the number of unread headlines on each feed
And all of these things will help me fit facebook, etc, into my life.
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david miller said 2:08PM on 8-15-2007
Great! More useless crap to clog up the Edge towers with. Not like some of us are actually trying to do something called BUSINESS on an iPhone or anything! I got an idea, lets all work together to make sure we can have TMZ iPhone friendly so we can all get the important news of the day! Christ!
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mnit said 2:18PM on 8-15-2007
david miller: you seen the iphone marketed to bussiness types? No, didn't think so.
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Anthony said 3:05PM on 8-15-2007
Tried to see if this iphone bookmark would work on a WM6 phone....No Luck.
I have the Wing by the way.
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Igor said 3:10PM on 8-15-2007
Great feature, love how they tailored it to the iphone, even deleting messages looks and feels like you're deleting SMS's on the iphone.
BUT: somehow it does not allow for my backspace key to work on its text boxes, does anyone get this problem? If I make a mistake while typing I have to refresh the page to erase my input data....
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pathum said 5:42PM on 8-15-2007
So David,
How many friend requests do you have now that every TUAW reader knows you have a facebook?
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punkassjim said 8:01PM on 8-15-2007
#9 david miller:
Comparing facebook to TMZ hardly seems fair. And uh, you go ahead and conduct business while you've got a few moments of freedom on the crapper. Me, I'd rather enjoy myself and communicate with friends when I've got a spare moment.
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Lucien said 8:17PM on 8-15-2007
It looks great.. it's too bad facebook logs me out of the iPhone app when I log into another browser.. typing my email and password every time gets annoying after a while. (which is probably good for not using facebook too much) :)
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Chuck said 5:00AM on 8-16-2007
There's video available here:
http://www.t3.co.uk/news/247/communications/mobile_phone/facebook_on_your_iphone
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Frank said 8:40AM on 8-16-2007
I agree with the annoying scrolling comment. I worked around this on my iphone blog experiment by providing "Top" and "Bottom" hyperlinks.
http://aniphoneblog.com
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