Facebook revamps iOS app from the ground up

Looks like Facebook’s rolling out the changes. It’s just launched a fresh version of its iOS app after earlier revamping the Android version and updating its Messages function.

A number of the updates are similar to the ones it rolled out in the refreshed Android app, meaning that you can now add to emoji to messages for instance. But it’s also much more than that.

For the first time, people accessing Facebook from their iPhones and iPads will be getting a native experience. That in and of itself pretty much guarantees a better experience than the web-based views that have bugged the platform from the get go.

One of the cool benefits of having rebuilt the app from the ground up, if Facebook;’sw claims are to be believed, is that it launches around twice as fast on your iDevice than it did previously.

As new stories come in on your news feed, they’ll appear on a banner. Once you tap the banner, you’ll be able to see the stories immediately. That means you no longer have to wait for the app to refresh, literally saving you seconds every day!

Cynicism aside, the ability to open photos immediately with a tap and close them with a swipe is pretty damn cool. In fact the kind of slick social networking experience that people get with other iOS apps has been missing on Facebook for too long. Getting that right shows that Facebook does, at some level, understand the user experience is important.