Facebook created new versions of its official apps for Android
and Apple phones and revamped its mobile-optimized Web site,
m.facebook.com, which works for most other smartphones.
The only thing constant about Facebook is that it keeps changing.
Just when you think you have figured out the interface to the
world's biggest social network, the engineers there update it again.
For the 600 million or so people who use their smartphones to
stay on top of Facebook friends, recent weeks have been especially
anxiety-producing. Recognizing some time ago that for many mobile
users, their Facebook phone app is their primary or only way of
access, the company unveiled a barrage of new features that bring
the mobile apps in line with the desktop browser version of
Facebook.
Facebook created new versions of its official apps for Android
and Apple phones and revamped its mobile-optimized Web site,
m.facebook.com, which works for most other smartphones. Facebook
says the mobile site has more users than the Android and Apple apps
combined.
Some new features are easy to spot. Friends' posts now include a
Share option so you can repost their updates, pictures and links to
your own timeline. But other features are more subtle, and take some
poking around to figure out.
The most significant change to Facebook's mobile apps is that the
News Feed, the real-time stream of updates from your Facebook
friends, now provides the same sorting options as the desktop
version: Top Stories and Most Recent. If you go a while without
logging in, the app will set the sorting to Top Stories, which
floats the updates from the friends with whom you interact the most
to the top of the feed. If you would rather see posts sorted with
the newest always on top, tap the gear icon next to News Feed on the
app's main left-hand menu. (It can take a little practice to tap the
gear rather than another control.) A menu will pop up that lets you
choose your sorting preference.
Your photos now have a Make Profile Picture option, so you do not
need to go back to a full-size computer to turn a photo taken on
your phone into your identifying image. With an iPhone, press and
hold the picture to bring up the command; in Android phones, it is
an option in the overflow menu.
Facebook has also built its chat function into the mobile apps.
Rather than the e-mail-like Message utility, Chat is designed for
conversations in which both parties tap back and forth at the same
time. To start a chat session, tap the human-silhouette icon in the
upper right corner of the app. That will bring up a list of your
friends who are available right now to start a chat session, either
on their phones (indicated by a phone icon) or on their desktops
(indicated by a green dot). There is a Favorites list you can edit
to list only the friends you message most, so you do not have to
pore through your entire list of available friends to find them
every time.
Do you upload lots of photos to Facebook from your smartphone?
You have two new options. First, you can now select more than one
photo by tapping, to upload them together. You can also configure
the app to automatically upload every image you shoot to a private
album from which you can later share them with a couple of taps. To
turn on this feature, called Photo Sync, go to your timeline and tap
your Photos icon.
