Facebook’s New iPhone App Adds Map View of Friends’ Locations, Check-Ins For Events
In Facebook’s first update to its iPhone app in five months, the company added a new map view for seeing friend’s locations and check-ins for events.
Facebook also changed the user interface for notifications, putting bigger profile pictures in, and added the ability to unfriend people from the iPhone app. Overall, the changes are pretty modest.
The map view will also help people better visualize how close their friends are, which might help if they’re in unfamiliar or new cities (see right).
By allowing users to check-in to Events, Facebook may be able to cross-promote the two features, inspiring users to RSVP and check in more often. As you can see below, users can not only see Nearby Places, but they can also browse Nearby Events. You can only see nearby events that you’re invited to, not all nearby public events. There is some potential for abuse though; a venue could create a persistent event that shows up at the top of the ranking to invited users passing by.
Event checkin stories in the news feed will draw attention to Events that are in progress by, and give Event promoters another way to gauge success. The ‘Attending’ RSVP count isn’t an accurate way to determine foot traffic, as many people say they’ll attend, or not, then do the opposite.
The Check-in screen for events looks almost identical to Places Check-ins. Users can tag friends that are with them there.
Considering that Facebook is aiming for parity between its iPhone and Android clients, expect its Android app to have such an update coming soon. In the five months since Facebook last updated its iPhone app, it has pushed out three releases to the Android platform.
April 4th, 2011 at 2:40 pm
[...] > Continue reading on Inside Mobile Apps. [...]
April 4th, 2011 at 8:39 pm
[...] Eindruck, ich wünschte mir, es würde sie in einer HD-Version für das iPad geben. Weitere Neuheit: echtes Checkin bei Events: Sofern ihr zu einem Event eingeladen seid, die Teilnahme bestätigt [...]
April 4th, 2011 at 10:21 pm
[...] längerer Zeit ist heute mal wieder ein Update der Facebook App fürs iPhone herausgekommen. Neben den üblichen Bugfixes können nun die Standorte der eingecheckten Freunde auf einer Karte betrachtet [...]
April 4th, 2011 at 10:31 pm
The Facebook iPhone dev team need to up their game. Sure they’re pushing out all these fancy features, but in the mean time it’s still lacking some very basic features, and meanwhile the mobile dev team are powering along with keeping up to date with the desktop version. Where’s liking comments? Mobile version has it. Where’s the activity feeds? Mobile version has it. Why can’t you edit your profile? Mobile version has it. Why can’t you tag people in statuses or comments? You can do it in MobileSafari in the desktop version at least. Why is there still no native interface for settings? Mobile version has it.
Come on…
April 14th, 2011 at 4:34 pm
[...] this month, Facebook released an update for the Facebook for iPhone mobile app that included an “Improved news feed”, but no one seemed to understand what [...]
April 21st, 2011 at 1:38 pm
[...] iPhone update builds on the recently released version 3.4 which added Event checkins, a Places map, and started pulling the news feed from m.facebook.com. The Android update follows 1.5.2, which [...]
August 23rd, 2011 at 7:54 pm
[...] feed of check-ins of friends via m.facebook.com and the native smartphone apps. In April, Facebook added a map view to the iPhone app’s check-in feed to make it easier to tell if friends were [...]
August 24th, 2011 at 10:02 am
[...] feed of check-ins of friends via m.facebook.com and the native smartphone apps. In April, Facebook added a map view to the iPhone app’s check-in feed to make it easier to tell if friends were [...]
August 24th, 2011 at 9:52 pm
[...] feed of check-ins of friends via m.facebook.com and the native smartphone apps. In April, Facebook added a map view to the iPhone app’s check-in feed to make it easier to tell if friends were [...]