DISQUS

ChasUnderwoodIII · 5 months ago

Nice. I think there is plenty of room for other vendors to promote apps within the iPhone environment without going through iTunes or jailbreaking your iPhone / iPod. I write for http://StuffRichPeopleLove.com and am excited by the creativity shown by established (e.g. Google / Microsoft - XBox) and up and coming companies (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) to build sustainable, innovative advantage for their users. Well done Facebook!

OurielOhayon · 5 months ago

Well for now, the best way to share your iPhone apps with your friends is http://Appsfire.com does not require facebook or nothing. Just an iPhone and a computer. let me know if you want to try it

Will Robertson · 5 months ago

Allowing Facebook Apps within the Facebook for iPhone app would be convenient, but it is not really feasible.

For the apps to be able to fully use the features of the phone, like an SGN iPhone/Facebook Connect Game does, it would have to be coded into the app. That wouldn't be realistic given how the App Store and iPhone SDK works. I suppose apps could have a page in the Facebook app with some content and link to a full standalone app, but then why even have it in there in the first place?

Eric Eldon · 5 months ago

I don't mean apps that you would actually use apps within Facebook's iPhone app.

"I suppose apps could have a page in the Facebook app with some content and link to a full standalone app, but then why even have it in there in the first place?" This is more what I mean.

There are a few things Facebook could do here. One feature would be to show you which friends and how many friends are using a particular iPhone app that uses Facebook Connect. It'd be a sort of automated list of recommendations, based on information from Facebook Connect (which I think would fit under the SDK terms). Another feature would be to fully integrate notifications from iPhone apps that use Connect into a separate tab or window from web-based applications. Users of the Facebook iPhone app may gloss over web-based app notifications but be more inclined to check out Facebook-connected iPhone apps while on their iPhones.

Will Robertson · 5 months ago

That would be interesting if they did something like that.

I am a big fan of Apps that integrate with Facebook connect, and would love a way to discover them more easily and find friends who also use them. Integration with the Facebook app would definitely lend a hand in that!

Simon · 5 months ago

No way ithat would mean trying to be an OS on top of Apple and for this Stevee WOULD SMACK THEIR FACE TO THE GROUND OUT OF THE APP STORE §§§

Eric Eldon · 5 months ago

I'm not saying there would be a full OS within Facebook's iPhone app.

ceivajoe · 5 months ago

The web gets tighter & tighter each day. Interesting article about how Facebook may help popularize iPhone apps.

sanj · 5 months ago

Apple won't like anyone else pushing apps, but anyone can generate a link and lead people to their content on the iTunes Store. As an example, our app is at http://itunes.com/apps/luckycal.

But, it'd be trivial for Facebook to set up a config option during app setup on their site asking for the URL of the iPhone application. I'm guessing they'd want to make sure it was using FBConnect and so getting into that directory might require a step of human intervention.

Second, I think that there's another path. Do you remember when the iPhone first came out and the story line was that you were supposed to write web apps? And that those would "just work" on the iPhone? It sounds silly now, especially referencing the iPhone, but FB apps *are* web apps.

In fact, for our iPhone application, we chose to build a very "thin" client component and then sublaunch Mobile Safari so we could take advantage of server-side work and rendering. I believe it works pretty well, but you're welcome to see for yourself: http://itunes.com/apps/luckycal

Since FB Apps are just web apps, the apps 'tab' on the Facebook iPhone application could launch the mobile version of the FB Apps the user has installed -- ideally shrunk down and optimized for the handheld screen. In fact, you could use a WebUI view to keep it within the Facebook iPhone application and maintain the user experience. The sublaunch could deal with handing over the credentials *and* perhaps some other information (geolocation comes to mind). I'd be happy to port what we've done into that environment.

The practical upshot would be that existing FBApps would have a place on the iPhone with little additional work for Facebook.