Facebook, LinkedIn upgrade mobile experiences for developers, end users
Mobile is at the forefront of the agenda for Silicon Valley's social networking giants as both Facebook and LinkedIn have rolled out major upgrades this week.
Starting with Facebook, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company is bringing its Open Graph app and games infrastructure to mobile devices while also introducing version 3.5 of its iOS SDK.
Announced amid the social network's Mobile DevCon in New York City on Thursday, Facebook's director of product management Douglas Purdy explained on the Facebook Developers Blog that these updates further transition Facebook to a mobile-first platform.
Purdy outlined the two major features behind Open Graph for mobile, including the Object API for creating Open Graph objects without requiring a web server to host them along. The mobile version also comes with a native Share Dialog for built-in support of Open Graph sharing actions for sharing content without having to log into Facebook first.
Furthermore, Facebook revealed a few more stats about the state of Open Graph.
As of April 10, 81 percent of the top grossing 100 iOS apps and 70 percent of the top grossing 100 Android apps are integrated with Facebook.
Additionally, 82 percent of the top grossing US 100 iOS games apps and 75 percent of the top grossing US 100 Android games apps are integrated with Facebook.
As for LinkedIn, the professional social network has been busy revamping its desktop portal interface and look over the last few months.
Tomer Cohen, the product lead for LinkedIn's mobile unit, explained in a blog post on Wednesday that the mobile version has been redesigned from "front to back to create more delightful interactions throughout the app."
We’re surfacing up the most relevant and timely professional insights in your stream so you can quickly discover and engage with all of the great professional conversations taking place across LinkedIn. This means an engaging, vibrant and visual stream with tailored updates, news, original posts from Influencers and much more. Joining the conversation is now even easier with liking and commenting available directly in your stream.
Based on Cohen's comments, the point of the revision is to bring the mobile experience completely in line with the desktop one, enabling the same business connections and potential decisions -- but perhaps more frequently than before.
Some of the new touches are centered around the news streams and navigation pages, which is also likely in preparation for a pending deluge of more content thanks to the recent acquisition of digital news reader Pulse.
The new version of LinkedIn for mobile is available for iOS and Android devices now. For a closer look at LinkedIn's new mobile app, check out the promo clip below: