Imagine my surprise this morning, when, upon logging in to Facebook with my Blackberry browser, I was presented with the option of downloading a Facebook for Blackberry application – written and signed by Research in Motion (RIMM), the maker of Blackberry. Well, hearing this was made by RIMM, I’m in.
It certainly makes FB much easier on the Blackberry. 7 Icons on top of the interface cover Status, Photos, Friends, Inviting, Poking, Wall posting, and Messages. As noted by some of the comments on the application’s page, you can’t yet get your messages from Facebook – only send new ones. You also can’t browse friends by picture, just by name. When you find a friend you want to check, you can ask for the full profile and see it, but in a pretty limited way compared to a web browser.
There were two messages when I first set up the app – and one was about what alerts you would get using it. I read them briefly, hoping to go back to them after exploring, but now I can’t find them. As far as I can tell from the application’s page, I’d just be setting up email alerts to the phone in some way – but poor interface design not letting me get back to those basic instructions quickly.
I eventually have figured out that my Blackberry’s main email address has to be the address that gets facebook notifications – then facebook messages will come to the FB app.
I see this application having serious potential, but right now it’s a pretty limited feature set. It is a great move on RIMM’s part. Back a while ago, Helio was touting connections to MySpace. Too little, too late from a marginalized phone platform. With this move, RIMM is making a huge statement about how they want to support not only the business Blackberry users but the cool, hip, smartphone audience. Well done.