Facebook Android App Gets Updated: Tag Your Friends

For all you Facebook Android users out there in green bot land, you may like to know that there is a new update available for your Facebook application that enables the user to get a bit more social with their Facebook friends.

According to the guys over on Droid-life, the new update for Facebook for Android delivers the ability for users to tag friends when updating their status along with being able to search friends easier, and add you phone number to your profile.

The Facebook for Android update also delivers numerous bug fixes and apparently if you want to tag your friend in a status all you need to do is to type in ‘@’ along with their name, similar to Twitter.

That’s about it in Facebook for Android version 1.5.3, so all you need do now is hit up the update button on your Android smartphone or head on over to the Android Market.

The Facebook iPad app maker: Friendly

I shot this for my dad, who just got an iPad and just got on Facebook. I helped him yesterday get his account setup. It’s interesting bringing a new family member onto Facebook.

Things we take for granted, like adding a profile photo, are fairly difficult for new social network users. I keep a photo of myself on all my devices so I can get one up quickly, but he didn’t have a photo of himself on his iPad.

Other things I understand deeply that he doesn’t? What happens when you “friend” someone. He had never done it before and didn’t understand the consequences of doing that. He didn’t know his news feed would change, for instance, or that that person would be able to see everything he puts up on his profile.

Heck, we haven’t even started to cover what privacy settings he should change.

Anyway, one problem on the iPad is that there isn’t an official Facebook app. That doesn’t seem to be a problem, right, but because the web page isn’t designed for touch it can sometimes be frustrating.

In this interview I meet the developer behind Friendly, Cyril Moutran, co-founder of Oecoway, and we get a good demo of what Friendly does for iPad and we also talk about why he only develops apps for iPad and is skeptical about other platforms, like Android or WebOS.

You can get Friendly on iTunes here.