Back in early May we posted an article about new features that may come to Apple’s iOS 6 and one of the aspects we discussed was Facebook integration. This has featured in beta versions of iOS before but has never come to the final release and so it didn’t look too likely. However news today is that iOS 6 will move to Facebook integration and that we will be hearing more about it at WWDC 2012, starting on June 11.
This would be a hugely popular move demonstrated by the fact that since Twitter was integrated in iOS 5 people have used it more. A similar integration for Facebook makes perfect sense then and a report says that Apple and Facebook are indeed in talks and on the edge of a deal that would bring this to fruition. The deal would mean that Facebook assets would come to future iOS devices with iOS 6 integration and the same report also says that this is expected to be announced at WWDC.
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised considering the signs that Apple and Facebook have become closer over recent months, the new Facebook camera app promotion in the App Store for example. Also at the D10 conference earlier in the week, Apple CEO Tim Cook uttered the promising words “stay tuned” when talking about Facebook, after describing it as a “great company.” Tech Crunch brings the news about the Facebook integration saying that they have discovered it will be in the included in the upcoming iOS version.
Although Twitter will still be integrated in the next iOS and there are further plans to be discussed at WWDC the news that Facebook integration is also on the way will please many people and could of course be another draw for the upcoming iPhone 5, which is virtually guaranteed to arrive with iOS 6. The move should offer a seamless experience between apps and Facebook, avoiding the use of the somewhat awkward iOS Single Sign On technique.
One complication that will need to be ironed out is how ‘sharing’ will work with Facebook integration. This is a popular part of Twitter’s integration with iOS but Facebook sharing is far more complex than that of Twitter, with more types of permissions for posting in different places and different people being allowed to view postings, as well as Open Graph. It looks likely then that at least initially, Facebook integration with iOS 6 will be kept pretty simple.
It all sounds rather promising then but we should point out that until this is made official, hopefully at WWDC, it remains unconfirmed and also that either party could change tack at the last minute. We’ll be following developments though and will bring you more as we hear it.
Would you like to see Facebook integration with iOS 6? Have you found the already existing Twitter integration with iOS 5 useful? Let us know what you think by sending in your comments.