Facebook app for Android gets a makeover

Days after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg downloaded the social networking giant's official Android application to his new smartphone, an overhauled Facebook for Android version 1.3 is now available, promising an improved user interface highlighted by more efficient access to social media content. According to Mashable, the revamped Facebook app's homescreen now shows messages, notifications and friend requests separately, with the bottom of the screen boasting a swipe-to-scroll slideshow featuring contacts' most recent photo uploads. Notifications now appear in a slide-up bar along the bottom of the homescreen. In addition, users are no longer forced to navigate out of the Android app to visit the Facebook mobile site to approve friend requests or view videos.

Facebook for Android 1.3 represents the application's first significant overhaul since its debut last fall. According to recent Nielsen Company data, Facebook is the second most popular application on Android, used by 51 percent of consumers, behind only Google Maps (67 percent). In late May, Facebook issued a software development kit optimized for the Android operating system, promising open-sourcing tools and sample code enabling developers to integrate social media features into their Android apps, among them resources to integrate strong authentication using OAuth 2.0, requests to Facebook's new Graph API and story publication back to Facebook via Feed forms.

For more on Facebook for Android 1.3:
- read this Mashable article

Related articles:
Facebook issues SDK for Android
Facebook touts the need for speed with new mobile site
Facebook Mobile surpasses 100 million users
Facebook mobile usage jumps 600 percent in 2009