Since the introduction of the iPad I have been searching for a Facebook application that runs natively on the iPad. While the Facebook app scales up and is usable, it’s designed for the iPhone and iPod touch, not the larger display of the iPad. I started using Friendly for iPad about a month ago and it has most of the features that I would like in a Facbook app for the iPad.
The Good
I really like the design of the app. Upon launching you are immediately taken to your home page just like when opening Facebook on a computer. Along with Home there are three other sections to choose from; Profile, Friends, and Inbox. Each of these sections is divided into tabs. The tabs are laid out the way you expect that they would be if this were an app directly from Facebook itself. Within the first tab you see upon launch you get both the option of showing Live Feed, as well as News Feed toggled inside of the same tab (this is similar to “Top News” and “Most Recent”). The next tab inside of the Home section is Events. The Events tab shows all of your upcoming events, as well as the events that people have invited you to. There is a simple option of choosing Yes, No, or Maybe. The Third Tab is the Requests Tab. This tab houses just what the name implies, requests. I really like this system of tabs, as it is really intuitive moving back and forth through the content.
The next section is Profile. Again, just as in the Home section there are three tabs dividing the content; Wall, Info, and Photos. Wall and Info act just as they would in the online version of Facebook. You can view all of your wall content but interestingly you can’t edit any of it. You cannot remove comments, or things that you have posted. The same thing applies to the Info section. You cannot edit any of your personal information from within the Info tab. There is a pretty slick feature however that I stumbled across while trying to edit my info. I touched on my address to see if that took me to a screen that allowed me to edit it, and instead it brought up a Google map showing me where my house was on Google. This is perfect for business pages because all I have to do when viewing a business fan page is touch the address and it pops up in a Google map showing me where I can find the business. It does all of this within the application. No Safari Pages, so when I’m done looking at the map I simply click done and I’m right back where I was. Pretty cool! The Third and Final Tab within the Profile section is Photos. The thing I really like about the Photos section in this app is the simplicity, yet fully packed features. When you click on the Photos tab, Friendly brings up all of your Facebook Photo albums with a small thumbnail next to them showing the album cover. The default view inside of the album is thumbnail view, however you have the option of either clicking and enlarging a specific image, or clicking the play button to start a slideshow of all of the images. Also housed in the album controls is the ability to launch the actual facebook site, which seemed a little out of place to me because it takes you to your homepage not the album which you are viewing. Again this is a window inside of the app though so there is no need to relaunch the app when you are done in the new window. You simply click done and you are right back inside of the application.
You can get Friendly – Facebook Browser here from the 
The Friends section holds just what you would expect, a list of your friends. There is a search bar to search within your friends list at the top of the page. The other two tabs in this section are for Phonebook and Pages. These tabs work just as their respective sections on actual Facebook do, with one added benefit in the pages section. In the pages section of the Friendly app, you get each of your pages listed on its own line with the logo, or picture representing the page next to it. This is a huge frustration for me on actual Facebook where the pages section looks like on long run on sentence. Take note Facebook, this is how it should be done.
The fourth and final section is the Inbox section. Housed within this section are the Messages, sent, and updates tabs. These tabs house just what they sound like they would house. There are your incoming messages, your send messages and updates sent out by your friends or liked businesses.
But where’s the CHAT? I didn’t even realize it was there for a while. The icon for the chat is in the bottom right hand corner of every page, and tab but it is almost transparent so I didn’t notice it the first few times I ventured inside of Friendly. Once you see it and open it however, there is potential for it to be a great Facebook chat platform. I say potential because it doesn’t really show all of your friends. When you open the chat page, you get a list of your online friends on the left hand side of the page similar to what you would have under the online friends list of Facebook on the computer. The problem is, it only shows about 13 friends and the rest run off the bottom of the page. You can tell that they’re down there, but you can’t scroll for some reason. When you try to scroll like you usually would, you move the entire screen instead of the list. I’m sure it’s just a bug, and they will have that fixed soon, but for now it’s still annoying.
The Not So Good
So what don’t I like about this app? Besides the chat issue, I don’t like that when I’m within the friends tab, I don’t have the option to sort my friends. I want to be able to sort by recently added friends, work friends, networks, etc. Also I don’t like that when in the Home section, whenever I move away from the Live Feed tab and then return, it defaults to the “Top News” instead of Live feed. I’m not interested in what happened 8 hours ago; I want to see what people are posting now. That’s the idea of social networking, to stay up on what’s going on now.
The Bottom line
This is a paid application but it’s a good one! There are a few bugs that I would like to see worked out, but so far it’s the most full featured Facebook app that I have seen or used. It’s definitely worth a shot if you like Facebook and want to use it on your iPad.
Friendly - Facebook Browser
Friendly is a native iPad App to browse your Facebook account with.
- Oecoway, Inc.
- Get on App Store
- $4.99
All info was collected on 18th August, 2010 when the app was reviewed.
About Jason Lykins
Jason is a Photographer and all around tech guy. Jason is also the owner of Jason Lykins Photography. Follow him on Twitter @JasonLPhoto or on Facebook.
I can understand the need for a Facebook app for the iPhone, but for the iPad… I just use Safari. On the iPad, the screen is large enough that the plain old Facebook website works great.
I was using the plain old Facebook in Safari as well, but there is no option for the chat there that I could find…. That’s when I went looking for an app.
you can use…
http://www.facebook.com/presence/popout.php
to chat on the iPad. (though I still use Friendly..)
I agree with Chris except that there’s no chat on safari. Have you tried the two finger scrolling for more contacts?
I too have been torn in the arguement for and against the need for a Facebook iPad app. Yes using Safari works just like on my laptop, but as the iPad is a mobile device I want notifications and chat. Most of all I want the ability to be logged into 2 FB accounts at once on my iPad. I share my iPad with my GF, I hate having to log back into FB. With an app I can always be logged in to it and she can always be logged into the website.
How can I send private messages to Friends on this app? I can’t seem to find it. Thanks.
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How do I remove Facebook iPad Friendly account? I do not like the duplicate entries and duplicate account from FaceBook original