(7) Expanding Subscribe and Friends Lists to mobile. (7) Facebook Messenger. One App To Rule Them All. Well if it isn’t my old friend the new Facebook app developer page … Yes that mysteriously up-to-date Facebook mobile developer page from a couple of weeks ago is officially live with an explanation of how the synchronized Facebook mobile platform will work across its iPhone, iPad, web and eventually Android apps (sometimes these things are so anticlimactic).
And, unlike the simplistic three-step tutorial (below) I was given when I downloaded the new Facebook iPhone app, this developer fact sheet has a bit more information about the motivation behind the changes. From the looks of it the new mobile Facebook experience is centered around keeping app developers content and complacent on the Facebook platform. In an update released today, both the web apps and iOS apps now feature prominent icons for Friends, Messages and Notifications. Facebook’s Mobile App Platform to Include Seamless Login, Bookmarks, Requests. New Screenshots and functionality details of Facebook’s forthcoming HTML5 mobile site and application platform have emerged.
Documentation of the updated mobile site and platform, externally referred to as Project Spartan, was briefly published to the Facebook Developers site last night, and TechCrunch recorded screenshots before Facebook took the pages down. We dug into the documentation and found many interesting facts about the mobile site that will impacts users and developers. The Facebook mobile site will receive a significant redesign, users will be able to authorize and use third-party mobile apps from within the mobile site, these apps will be accessed through bookmarks shown alongside Facebook’s in-house apps, and users will have the ability to post to the news feed and send Requests/invites that are delivered as notifications.
Here we’ll take a look at the biggest changes evident from the leaked documentation and what they mean: Mobile Site Redesign.