Social for the iPad Review

There is one great thing about Safari on the iPad for Facebook users - the main website actually works very well on the iPad, without much need for a separate app. Well, if you're mostly just a lurker who only posts the occasional thing, Facebook via Safari works great. If you're the type who needs to upload photos, hide or delete posts, or if you need more organization of the features in your Facebook user experience, Social for the iPad is here for you.

Social for the iPad is largely just a wrapper for the Facebook website in app form. All the information appears in similar layout to the website, the only main difference being a different font and some larger buttons. One of the issues remedied by the app is that the main website's hover over buttons don't work on iOS Safari devices, so these buttons are now persistent, meaning you can delete your own posts, or hide posts from your main news feed. Tired of seeing your sister constantly post about her Mafia zombies' crops and can't wait to get back to a computer to hide them? Fret no longer, good sir or madam.

Social for the iPad does a great job making the Facebook experience on the iPad more complete. It doesn't alter the experience of using the web site, it only supplements it and gives you handy options to view your messages, notifications, and to make a group of your favorite people to quickly access. As well, when you add someone to your favorites, a prompt comes up with a button that confirms you've added them to your favorites, with a button that says "Yay!" to close the box. I appreciate little interface touches like this.

Social for the iPad being largely a wrapper has its problems - often times when you want to pull up something like a profile, a blank page will pop up, and you have to refresh. An issue with the main news feeds not appearing on devices on iOS 3.2.0 was fixed in a recent update, but pages not appearing properly still occurs. Also, this app largely only exists due to the deficiencies of not just Mobile Safari, but Facebook as well: they haven't updated their web application for iPad compatibility, either. If at least one of these issues gets addressed, and I'm betting on the latter happening first, then Social for the iPad might struggle to have any reason to exist at all.

But until then, the Facebookers of the world need a way to properly use Facebook on their iPad and Social for the iPad goes a long way towards making that experience far more tolerable for the moment. While it needs some work on the technical backend, this is a good choice for iPad Facebook users who need to access a wider set of Facebook features.