Yesterday I wrote about how great it was to finally have the Official Twitter App for iPad. However, when it comes to Facebook the wait continues. Unlike Twitter (they acquired a great 3rd party App and made it their own), Facebook has developed their own App for iPhone and iPod touch, but it's not yet a native iPad App. Although there is an official Facebook App for iPhone, it doesn't support all of the features of Facebook and that really bugs me considering that it comes directly from Facebook. Luckily when it comes to the iPad, Facebook works pretty good in Safari. It's not perfect, but it works. Last week Jason reviewed his favorite iPad 3rd party Facebook App, Friendly. Today, I'm reviewing a competitor to that App called Social. I was hesitant at first because usually 3rd party Apps just don't have the level of access to the service they are designed to support. This is why I want a native Netflix App with full queue and account management. 3rd Party Apps just can't access those features and the currently implementation of the "official" Netflix App for iPhone doesn't have them at all.
Social seems to have all of the features of Facebook
Wow! I was blown away by the level of Facebook feature support in this App. It supports the usual stuff like Friend, Photos, Chat and News feeds, but it also has support for Pages and Groups (the latter isn't even in the Facebook App for iPhone). The information is presented in easy to navigate (customizable) tabs. Sadly the only feature that it doesn't seem to have and it's one I use extensively is Lists. Again, this is not too surprising since the Official Facebook App doesn't have it either, but it's the only thing that I can see that's missing.
OK, sounds great what's wrong with it
Other than the missing Lists support the biggest problem with this App is that it's buggy. It quits on a regular basis and often times when I tap on something it takes me to my News feed instead of the item I tapped on. For example, I added three pages to the Favorites tab. When I go to the Favorites tab they are listed there. However, when I tap on any of them the Page never comes up, instead it goes straight to my own news feed. I can access those three pages no problem from the Pages tab. There are also some glitches playing Facebook videos.
UPDATE
Of course as soon as I wrote this review yesterday, he releases an update last night! I could have simply changed the review, but I thought it would be more interesting to see point by point what got fixed vs. what I had complained about. Also there was no time to thoroughly test the update, but the Favorites bug is fixed and although I see the lists feature via the News feed i don't see any way to actually manage the Lists via the App. Otherwise this looks very promising. Here's what the update addresses:
UPDATE #2
I just got a friend request and decided to process/accept in Social to see if the List support was there and I'm happy to say that it is! Although I can't manage the Lists themselves in the App, I'm very happy that I can add new Friends to Lists upon acceptance right in the App.
The Bottom Line
This is by far the best Facebook App I've seen to date on the iPad from a feature support standpoint. If the developer just works out the bugs, it would easily be a 4-5 star App. I'm looking forward to those updates.
You can get Social here from the 
Social
Social is a full featured Facebook App for iPad. It takes advantage of the vast majority of Facebook features and presents them in a native iPad format.
- Christian Arild Strommen
- Get on App Store
- $1.99
All info was collected on 9th September, 2010 when the app was reviewed.
About Terry White
Terry is the co-author of The Best Selling "The iPhone Book" 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions. He has been active in the industry for over 25 years and is the founder and president of MacGroup-Detroit, Inc., Michigan's largest Macintosh Users Group, host of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and a technology writer - Terry White Tech Blog.
Hi Terry. Nice review. Do you have to login each time you launch Social? If this is indeed the case, as it seems to be with me, that is a real downer for this app. Logging in each time is a pain.
It has kept me logged in since the first time I logged in. So far so good.
I have been using this app since day one and it had bugs. I kept sending suggestions to the developer and within 5 minutes always a response. Very impressive. Asked to be a tester for them, they accepted, found a Bug corrected in next version. I use it constantly and I love it. As you stated Best Facebook app!
Question has the app Social for IPad been pulled from the app store for any reason? I use this app and it seems to be good so far. I was thinking of trying Friendly to compare but just recently I was looking for Social in search on the app store and the app is nowhere to be found. Just wondering if It was pulled from the store and if so, for what reason? Was going to recommend this app to a friend but the app is no longer available in the app store. Any info would be appreciated.
Yes it looks like it’s been pulled. I don’t know why.
Things that make you go hmz….I really do like Social but I don’t want to get attached to it if it will no longer be supported or worse yet it was pulled over privacy concerns. Any ideas on who we could contact to see why it was pulled? I have searched google hi and low and I have found nothing on this.
You might try asking the developer himself: http://twitter.com/cstromme
Thank you
will try that