Facebook for Android overhauled

Written by: David Swan | Published in: MobilityFacebook users with Android will now be able to stalk their friends at twice the speed, with a new version of the official Facebook app released today.

Written by: David Swan | Published in: MobilitySocial networking behemoth Facebook has fired a salvo to mobile messaging servers, with the company now allowing users to send messages from their mobile without even having a Facebook account.

Now the Facebook can really start to replace your phone. Today Facebook rolled out its free VoIP voice calling feature to US users of Home and its Android Messenger app. That means even less reason to open your standard “phone” app, and more data for Facebook about who you care about the most.

A lot of news coming out of Facebook today, it seems. This afternoon, the social network is also announcing a series of updates for Android users, which include improvements to both the Facebook for Android and Facebook Messenger apps.

To be honest with you all, I rarely have a problem with Android’s official Facebook app. While it may be slow at times, causes some errors here and there, it’s rock solid for me 95% of the time and does everything I need it to.

Facebook’s event today is all about a new “Home on Android,” and that’s exactly what Facebook Home delivers. The Android launcher integrates Facebook features into most aspects of the Android smartphone experience, eliminating the need to jump into a dedicated Facebook app in most situations. It brings a very different experience vs.

If Facebook’s going to make money on mobile, it needs developers building social apps that send it content and buying ads. That’s why making it easy to build Facebook-integrated apps is critical, and why today it revamped its Android SDK and launched the Android Dev Center.

A couple months ago we reported on Facebook’s testing of a new photo uploading feature for their Android app. Today Facebook announced the official availability of the new feature for Android and iOS versions of their mobile app. The Photo Sync function will automatically upload pictures captured with a mobile device to a special, private album on the user’s Facebook account.

Facebook is getting into the “Android launcher” market, the company has confirmed, thanks to its new Facebook Home application announced today. The app, as previously reported, is new software that integrates the Facebook experience deeply into the Android operating system. But Android launchers today aren’t a very large market, relative to the reach Facebook has in mind.