Facebook

We’re guessing you’re familiar with a little social network called Facebook. It connects you with friends and lets you share updates, photos and videos. It notifies you when your friends comment on or like your posts. It lets you instantly communicate through Facebook Chat and gives you the option of sending someone a private message—you get the picture.

But if you’ve used the Facebook mobile app for the iPhone, you’re probably also familiar with the time it took to load photos, search for friends or simply refresh a page. Universally, speed was the biggest complaint. With dropping shares and increasing pressure from advertisers and Wall Street investors, Facebook developers buckled down, and on August 23, 2012, they launched version 5.0 for the iPhone and iPad.

Mark Zuckerberg said in a status update that the app was “rebuilt from the ground up,” making it twice as fast and easier to use. The Facebook update promises a faster news-feed scrolling experience, a new banner at the top of the interface that lets you tap to quickly see more stories and a speedier load time on photos, according to Mick Johnson, mobile-product manager at Facebook. Well, the update delivered.

We downloaded the update, and upon first logging in, we didn’t notice much of a difference design-wise. The new interface looks remarkably similar to the last. There are still three tabs up top that let you update your status, upload a photo or check in.

The real changes are more than skin-deep. The app was rewritten in the native iOS programming language, the code all iPhone apps go by instead of HTML5, the code websites use. Unfortunately, there is still no “share” option.

The update was “a big step forward,” Zuckerberg also wrote in a status. We agree, but let’s not forget that the update only improved Facebook for iPhone and iPad users. We hope Android folk won’t be left out for too long. According to Business Insider, Zuckerberg is forcing his employees to use Androids to constantly remind them how subpar the Facebook app is on the Android platform. Facebook recently improved the ability to upload batches of photos and create invitations on Android, but when it comes to overall swiftness, we see the need for an update in the near future.

Reviewed: Jun 09, 2011 | Yelena Galstyan

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