Hands-on video with Facebook on the Zune HD

A couple of days ago I wrote that the Facebook app for the Zune HD was made available on the Zune Marketplace. For a day or so there were permission login issues between Microsoft and Facebook and these were quickly resolved by both companies. We saw screenshots of the application in use before the public release so the issues appear to have been something Microsoft could not have planned for. The application is now up and running perfectly and as you can see in my video below it is actually quite functional and even beats some applications I have used on recent smartphones. I walked through the parts of the application that I could the other day, but let me add in some thoughts after gaining full functionality.

The first time you login now you should see a pop-up box asking if you want to grant the application access to your Facebook account and this is the part that was missing previously. If you then go into your Facebook account in your web browser then you should find 6 different permission settings instead of the 2 that were there when the application was broken.

Facebook functions

I can now verify that you can view your friends photos and status updates, tap on the Like icon, and add comments to the photos and updates. The Friends tab shows you your friends in either list or thumbnail icon views and tapping on your friend loads up their details with wall, info, and photos. You can send your friend a message, view their info and photos, and leave a wall comment.

I described the rest of the application capability in my previous post. Unlike a smartphone that gives you phone numbers and more information, the info provided for you and your friends is pretty basic and includes hyperlinks to web pages they have in their profile. There is no Facebook chat capability, but I actually have only seen that in very few mobile Facebook applications so am not expecting to have this capability added to the Zune HD app.

Facebook for Zune HD is free and quite a good application. Thanks for the freebie to use while couch surfing on my Zune HD Microsoft.