The Seesmic team just launched an Air app for Facebook, an application made possible thanks to the newly-released Facebook status API. The option are pretty limited so far: Users can see friends’ updates, and can updates their status too. So far, that is it. No reply to an item is yet possible.
The app works fine so far, and this first release really is a more of a way to communicate on the team’s ongoing development effort to integrate Facebook in the Thwirl experience.
From Thwirl’s CEO:
I know, you want Twhirl and Facebook in the same window, it’s coming and we will get you a #teamseesmic preview in a few weeks.
Three things from this app gave me a itch though: First the settings button doesn’t work (at least it didn’t when I tried), which is too bad because I would have liked to see my configuration options. Facebook is the social network that has the most privacy settings, so it is interesting to see how third-party apps adjust to that.
The second thing I didn’t understand is why the application is called Seesmic for Facebook, and not Thwirl for Facebook. Seesmic Inc has two products: the Seesmic video product, and the social app Thwirl. I already expressed how I find the company’s strategy a little confusing for the moment (even though I see where they are going with this), but for this app, I don’t see anything linked to Seesmic whatsoever.
Third and least, upon launch, the app will open your browser and make you go through Facebook to authorize the app’s access to your account. I know, that is where Facebook could do a few stretches to make it easier for third-party apps to work with them. Still, for the Seesmic for Facebook preview app, it opens three tabs:
So once you have 3 Facebook tabs open in your browser, do you really need a Facebook app running on your desktop?
Those are meant to be constructive feedbacks for this alpha product, and overall, I’m glad to see that Thwirl is becoming a fuller social messenger 🙂