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Among the people affected by Apple’s iOS 6 Maps debacle was claimed project head Richard Williamson, who was reportedly shown the door at the end of 2012. While the details were never directly corroborated outside of Williamson’s exit in December, he may have found a new home at Facebook: Bloomberg‘s sources say that the director joined the social network’s mobile software division within the past two weeks. We don’t know what (if anything) Williamson might be producing when Facebook has so far declined comment, although there’s no question that he has an appropriate pedigree when he managed interface development for key iOS apps and helped get Safari off the ground. Suffice it to say that the internet giant has plenty of projects that might benefit from his overall experience.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile, Apple, Facebook

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Via: AppleInsider

Source: Bloomberg

After Facebook and its 1 billion plus users, Twitter is perhaps the most widely used social network. Back in December Twitter announced that it had more than 200 million monthly users. Today at a conference WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum revealed that the popular cross platform messaging service has more users than Twitter. Confirming that they had more users than Twitter, Jan however did not reveal any specific figures which will obviously be over 200 million. He also revealed that WhatsApp handles some 12 billion outbound messages and 8 billion in bound messages every single day.

Recently we were hearing rumors that Google was willing to acquire the service for up to $1 billion, these rumors were quickly shot down by Neeraj Arora, the business development head at WhatsApp. Today Jan touched on this subject as well, saying that they wanted to build a sustainable and independent company, to build a business and that acquisition is not really a viable exit strategy for them. While Twitter and WhatsApp are in two entirely different niches, it is interesting to see just how quickly a cross platform messaging service has gained a surge in its user base.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Twitter ‘Home’ Like App Is A Possibility, Outlook.com Android App Update Brings New UI And Features,

Facebook showed off a number of new features that it has been working on to enhance user experience on mobile devices, at the Home launch. Facebook Home brings all of those features for Android, one of them is Chat Heads. The social network’s new iOS app is being rolled out right now which brings Chat Heads and a number of design tweaks to Apple’s platform. Users now have the ability to send ‘stickers’ to each other. Stickers are basically emoji like giant pictures. Only iPhone users can send stickers right now, they’re currently free and come in stacks of related pictures. News Feed has been redesigned, the look and feel is much cleaner than before making it easier to access content.

Chat Heads behavior on iOS is different than that on Android. Due to iOS sandboxing its apps, Chat Heads will only pop up inside the Facebook app, as opposed to popping up anywhere in Android. Incoming Facebook Messages will make Chat Heads pop out, they’re not integrated with SMS. Users can open one themselves to chat with any of their friends. They can be repositioned inside the Facebook app and will be vertically arrayed on the iPad’s larger display. Facebook 6.0 for iOS can now be downloaded from iTunes App Store.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: iTunes Has 63% Share In Digital Music Market, Google ‘Would Still Really Like’ Apple To Use Its Maps, Says Eric Schmidt,

According to a tweet by Facebook product designer and UI guru Mike Matas, his team is now working with influential app designer Loren Brichter. That’s right, the man behind Tweetie and Letterpress is now working for Facebook. More »

This week it’s been announced – but not updated quite yet – that the iOS version of Facebook will be getting a bit of Facebook Home for the iPad and iPhone. Though the full version of Facebook Home really isn’t a possibility for Apple’s mobile products the way their software is set up, the Chat Heads piece of the puzzle is being teased by Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer and mobile head Cory Ondrejka today at the AllThingsD Dive Into Mobile conference taking place this week.

It’s not clear at the moment whether the Chat Heads feature will be appearing in the Facebook Messenger app exclusively or if the Facebook app itself – the main app – will have some aesthetic changes that reflect the inclusion of Chat Heads. From what we’ve seen thus far of Chat Heads in the Android Facebook app family, the best bits are in the inclusion of chats in your everyday non-Facebook app experience. With the iOS version we’re expecting a much more in-app set of features.

Noted today, the updated Facebook apps for iOS will also include “stickers” for the messaging end on both iPad and iPhone. You’ll also be seeing an updated iPad app which includes aesthetics brought to Facebook in the newest newsfeed update to desktop. The mobile version will once again be reflecting the desktop version in-browser and vice-versa.

UPDATE: Facebook has added information on the update that’ll be rolling out today. Have a peek at these notes from the social network and keep refreshing your iTunes store updates tab!

Chat Heads
• Now you can keep chatting, even when you’re doing other stuff on Facebook, like checking your News Feed.
• Tap chat heads to reply, drag them around, or flick them down to close.

Stickers
• Messaging within Facebook for iOS now includes Stickers.
• Tap the smiley to add stickers to your messages and get more stickers in the Sticker Store

News Feed
• We’re also rolling out the improvements to News Feed that were announced in March.
• The biggest change is on iPad, where you’ll see brighter, more beautiful stories.

Have a peek at the timeline below for more information on Facebook Home, Chat Heads, and all things Facebook mobile from the past few weeks. You’ll want specifically to see our Facebook Home review for a vision of how this ecosystem works on Android and at our hands-on with Chat Heads for Android to see what the iOS version might bring. Again, we’re expecting a much more miniature set of features.

Stay tuned as we keep an eye on the apps with you and we’ll let you know when they’re updated – soon and very soon!

Chat Heads bringing Facebook Home to iPhone and iPad today [UPDATE] is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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