What was hot on the web this week? Get up to speed on the latest trends, news and services with some of our favorite stories.
Facebook for iOS goes native, waves goodbye to HTML 5
Facebook announced this week a native version of the Facebook app for iOS that’s twice as fast. iOS Product Manager Mick Johnson said, “We’ve become aware that while we have a great mobile website, embedding HTML 5 inside an app isn’t what people expect.”
In building a native iOS Facebook app, the company looked at improving three key places, all relating to speed: launching the app, scrolling through the News Feed, and tapping photos inside the News Feed.
Aside from speed improvements, Facebook also added a handful of features and tweaks like new animations and gestures, such as enabling easier one-handed browsing.
Read more here.
Facebook launches Sponsored Results search ads
Facebook released its type-ahead search ads, called “Sponsored Results”, this week. This is the latest advertising offering from Facebook. The desktop-only placement is an embedded ad unit displayed within the list of type-ahead search results on Facebook.com. Advertisers can use the units to reach Facebook members when they’re searching for Pages, places or applications.
While the desktop-only units won’t solve Facebook’s mobile monetization woes, they do give the company a new and potentially lucrative space to display ads. Marketers, game-makers and even small businesses can bid against a competitor’s Pages, places and apps and redirect a person to their own Facebook properties.
Read more here.
Facebook revamps Messages to look more like email
Facebook began rolling out a new, cleaner version of Messages, which looks more like your email inbox. Your Messages inbox is now (or will soon be) sorted into two panes, mimicking the likes of Microsoft Outlook. Search and message previews are on the left pane, and on the right are full message threads and a reply field.
As you can see from the below screenshot, it’s a pretty big improvement. Now users don’t have to navigate back to the main Messages page to swap among threads.
You can also now add emoticons and attach multiple photos to Messages, Facebook said.
Read more here.
Facebook mention tagging lets apps generate FB notifications and referral traffic
Facebook announced this week that it will allow users to mention their friends in messages in Open Graph apps. While users can already “action tag” their friends using other apps (such as on foursquare, for example), the update will allow users to “mention tag” friends as well. The difference is that action tags are for doing something with a friend, say going out to dinner, whereas mention tags can be used for anything in the text of a user post (see below).
Mention tagging
Action tagging
Facebook notes that there are no privacy changes associated with the feature, and users have to be friends with who they tag (just like on Facebook).
Read more here.
