Let's face it. Facebook is the king of all social networks. Now there are many choices out there for people to use to communicate, stay in touch, share ideas and experiences. But, everyone has heard of Facebook and even if people don't use it, they still have an idea of what it is. Facebook has their own branded app on almost every new mobile phone that comes out. But, is it really the best way to interface with your Facebook account? You could use their app or a web interface...or....maybe....someone else's app. That's right! There are other companies out there that have created their own front end experience for users to access all of the stuff that they want to do.
First of all there is the Facebook app.
The version of the this app that came installed on my Droid Incredible 2 is very plain. It gets the job done but, it gets frustrating to try to get some very basic things done. For instance, in the photo above, you can see that there are three people that "Like" this article. There isn't a way to see who those three people are. That doesn't seem very social to me. Also, it is difficult to share any articles. If I want to share this article I need to click on it first. It then launches a browser where the original article resides. Then, I can click on the share button that they put on the original site. In my opinion that is not a very good way to share things. Other than that the app is pretty solid. It seems to be very responsive and stable. And, there are no ads on this app.
Then I started using FriendCaster.
I have really enjoyed using FriendCaster over the original Facebook app. Everything that the Facebook app does, this one does just as well or better. It addresses the issues that I missed with the other app. When you see that people "Like" something, all you have to do is click the area where it says how many people Like it and a window pops up with the list of names in it. How great is that?
When you want to share an article or post all you have to do is click on the article and it opens into its own window. In the top right of the window is a dot with two arrows pointing up. Click on that and you get a screen that shows up like the one in the photo above on the right. It has a whole list of ways that you can share this one article. You can use Blogger, Google Docs, Dropbox, Gmail, etc. It is great to have that many options! Sometimes you would like to share a photo one way and maybe a news article a different way.
In the last month or so, I have had the app lock up on me once or twice. So, not bad at all but I didn't have the Facebook app lock up at all during that time. FriendCaster is free to use but they do put a small banner ad at the bottom of the app that can be distracting sometimes. There is also a paid version that gets rid of the ads and is supposed to add some more features.
The Incredible 2 also has Friend Stream that comes pre-installed on the phone. I really didn't spend much time with it because of the way that it combines Facebook and Twitter into one place. Some people might like that but I use Facebook for mainly communicating with friends and family. I use Twitter more like a news feed. I don't need those two getting all intertwined.
I know there are more Facebook apps out there but, these are the ones that I have the most experience with. If you use something that you think is superior to these I would love to hear about them. Just post it here and I would like to try them out!
Have fun and customize!
Brian
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