At Last, A Facebook iPad Native App
By 
It’s no mystery that Facebook has become the social network forum where many of your friends and family spend quite a bit of time every day. It has simply become the place where many like to express how they feel, what they’re doing, where they’re going, where they’ve been, or simply share their opinions about anything and everything.
However, a native iPad Facebook app has been missing since Apple’s first generation tablet was launched in 2010. We thought that Facebook decided to leave this task to creative developers. But, that is about to change because Facebook is finally developing a native iPad app, according to a source from The New York Times.
A New York Times (NYT) insider has reported that Facebook plans to release a free iPad app in the coming weeks. The application has been carefully designed and optimized for the tablet, and has been personally inspected by Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg. According to the NYT source, the upcoming app will include an “amazing” media browser, the popular Facebook Chat and Groups features, and the company will also add features to allow you to shoot and upload photos and videos directly from the iPad 2 built-in cameras.
A source that has seen the application shared the following:
“The photo and video experience is amazing, offering full resolution and full-screen images,”
Both, Facebook and Apple, have been very quiet and have declined to comment about the latest rumor. Jaime Schopflin, communications manager at Facebook said:
“We have a great relationship with Apple that is exemplified by our iPhone application, but with regards to an iPad application we have nothing to announce now, and cannot comment on future Facebook products,”
This is an interesting turn of events. In case you don’t remember, Mark Zuckerberg had previously divulged that the iPad wasn’t mobile enough for his Facebook goals. He viewed the iPad as a desktop replacement. However, we know that Apple has sold more than 25 million iPads worldwide. In addition, in the absence of an official native Facebook app, other applications like Friendly became quite popular on the App Store. Perhaps, all of this has changed Zuckerberg’s mindset.
I, for one, do not like to use Facebook’s website via my iPad. The Web interface is not optimized for the iPad and requires too much browsing around. I like the iPhone app, which is quite convenient and easy to use.
Facebook has over 500 million users worldwide, and about 50% of their active users seem to be using the service via mobile devices. More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook already, which is a trend that shows that mobile applications and optimized mobile Web sites have helped Facebook grow. I think Mark Zuckerberg has been paying close attention on how Apple has dominated the tablet market, and he has also seen how consumers have shifted their interest towards tablets in general.
According to NYT, Apple “plans to help Facebook promote the new application by featuring it prominently in the App Store,”. It seems that both Apple and Facebook are getting a bit friendlier with each other, and may surprise us with a new iPad Facebook app very soon.
[via The New York Times]
