Review: Facebook -- now with push notification and contact syncing

I've never done a formal review of the Facebook iPhone app on iPhone J.D. even though it is one of the most useful apps on the iPhone and a handy way for attorneys to keep in touch with friends from high school, college, law school and elsewhere.  You never know, one of them may be your next client or co-counsel, plus there are other reasons that lawyers should consider using Facebook.  (Although in Florida and perhaps elsewhere, think twice before you send a friend request to a judge.)

In this past, I've resisted publishing a review of the Facebook app because, frankly, I suspect that every iPhone owner who uses Facebook already has and uses the free app.  If you don't, you are really missing out.  In many ways, I like the iPhone interface even better than the desktop web browser interface because it is clean and focused.  Plus, you get none of those annoying ads on the side. 

The main screen on the app gives you nine buttons so you can easily view your Wall or your News Feed, and on a second screen you can store shortcuts to your favorite Facebook friends.

    

I am writing about this app today to mention the new version 3.1 that came out yesterday.  The update adds two new features.  First, the app now supports push notifications.  In the main iPhone Settings app you can control the items for which you will receive push notifications.  For now, I have all seven options turned on, but as the novelty wears off I will probably start to selectively turn some off.  For example, with Messages notifications turned on, if someone sends you a Message (a direct e-mail) on Facebook, you will receive a pop-up notification on the iPhone.  (The Facebook push notifications do not make a sound, vibrate the phone, or add any icon badge updates, even if you have those features enabled for push notifications.)  In my experience, this service worked very quickly, typically providing a notification on the iPhone within a second or two of a message being sent.

    

If you are not someone who spends a lot of time on Facebook, enabling push notifications is a good way to make sure that you know when something relevant to you is happening on Facebook.  And even if you are a frequent Facebook user, now you can be even more timely.

The second nice improvement in the 3.1 update is that the Facebook app can now sync with your contacts.  For now, this feature only does two things.  If you enable contact syncing, Facebook will look at the names and phone numbers of people in your Contacts on your iPhone.  If it finds an exact match with one of your Facebook friends, then the app will add two things to the entry in your Contacts.  First, it will add the person's Facebook picture to your Contacts entry.  You can tell the app not to replace a photo in your Contacts if you already have one, and that way it just fills in missing photos.  (A few people have reported on the Internet that this didn't work for them, but for me it did a fine job of respecting entries for which I already assigned a picture.) [UPDATE: As Jared points out in the Comments, Facebook quickly released a 3.1.1 update to address syncing bugs.]

Second, it will add a home page entry to the Contact in the format of fb://profile/1234567890.   If you tap on that in the Contacts app on your iPhone, it will launch the Facebook app and show you that person's profile.  I have seen people post on the Internet, but have not been able to confirm myself, that if a phone number matches then the sync will occur even if the names are not exact matches.  Otherwise, the name has to match exactly, so if one of your friends uses a nickname on Facebook, or if you use a nickname in your Contacts, the sync for that friend won't work.

Facebook doesn't add your iPhone Contacts to Facebook, doesn't add your Facebook contacts to Contacts, or anything like that.  I like this conservative approach, although perhaps in the future they will add more syncing options.  For example, some people provide a phone number on their Facebook profile page, and it would be useful to have the app automatically download that into your Contacts entry for the person if you don't already have it.  But even for now, it is nice to have more profile pictures added to my Contacts automatically without having to use a third party program to accomplish this task.  When a friend calls me on my iPhone, I like having a picture come up, which my mind processes even faster than looking at a name.

The person at Facebook who developed the originally iPhone app left the project in late 2009, so it is nice to see that Facebook is still developing its app and adding new features.  I'm already looking forward to the next update.

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Comments

[App Developer]

Hi Jeff
It's good to see greater integration between apps and the address book - one step closer to multitasking, me thinks.
I have to confess to looking at Facebook as a news feed - essentially, I can read UK or world news from a news source (I like the Telegraph App) or I can read all the news from family and friends... which makes the iPhone the bathroom reader of choice!
PS I don't know whether you've seen this - http://www.parrot.com/ - it looks like fun and shows the full potential for iPhones hasn't really been touched yet...

[Jared]

Just an FYI for people checking this, 3.1 evidently had some flaws in the contact syncing (as bad as completely deleting them) and Facebook has already released 3.1.1. Make sure you get the update ASAP.

[Eric]

do I have to log into facebook all the time to receive this push notification?

[Jeff responds: No you don't. That is the beauty of push notification. You don't need to open the Facebook app at all. You can be doing anything else on your iPhone (or nothing at all) and you will see a pop-up notification altering you to the event, be it a new message, a friend request, etc. If you want, you could even go to a real computer to access Facebook and just use push notifications on the app to give you a heads up that there is something new that requires your attention.]

[Jason Harrison]

i would like the push notifications to make a sound when they are recieved other than that top app.

[Karine]

my push notification has been working for a day and it isn't anymore... well if someone post something on my wall i receive a push notification but not when someone comment on my photos , or statuts or other comments, and everything is turned on... any idea??

[Jeff responds: Same here. My push notification worked at first, but now I'm not getting a notification when someone sends me a private message. I presume that Facebook is still working out the kinks, and is probably overwhelmed by a huge number of users having all notifications turned on. Hopefully they get this fixed soon.]

[sarah]

I cannot get to the push notifications setting screen on my iphone... How do I go about this

[Jeff responds: It is not in the Facebook app itself. Go to the Settings app, then scroll all the way to the bottom to see a list of apps with preferences, and select Facebook. From there the third option down is push notifications.]

[Heather]

I just got the iphone today and I've got the push settings all to ON but I'm not getting any kind of sound notifications. Is that how it's suppose to be? I'm used to the Blackberry sending a sound with every notice. Thanks!

[Brandy Allen]

i have the same problem if someone likes my status i get the push but comments i am not getting any ideas. all my push settings are on