iPhone Apps

New Facebook iPhone app tells Twitter and SMS what it’s doing: Gunning for them

Today, Facebook has launched a new iPhone application, that directly targets messaging service Twitter as well as for-pay mobile text messaging services. The new application is a mobile status service that includes instant messaging functionality. It builds on Facebook friend relationships, but ignores a lot of the traditional social networking features of the site, such as profile info about what your favorite movie is.

See screenshot.

The new app integrates with Facebook’s existing “Chat” IM service...

WordPress and TypePad Spawn Mobile Blogging

Forgive us while we navel-gaze for a minute, but we were particularly pleased to learn that a mobile app for WordPress will debut in the iPhone store soon. The app will work with both Wordpress.com blogs and on-premise installations of version 2.5.1 and newer. Its announcement comes just over a month after competitor TypePad showcased its iPhone app onstage at the WWDC keynote (you can download it here)...

Loopt Brings Yelp Reviews to 3G iPhone

The iPhone App Store has just gone live and one of the apps getting early attention is Loopt, a location aware mobile social network startup we profiled in June. Loopt enables users to broadcast their status to a broad set of services and find interesting locations and reviews nearby. Their latest release for the iPhone integrates microblogging and reviews from Yelpinto its interface. According to founder Sam Altman, Loopt is using the iPhone's rich media platform to pilot new features and services before they filter their way into other mobile phones...

Before the App Store “Opens”, it has already made Apple $55,000

Tucked away on the iPhone 2.0 version of Apple’s Application Store is a counter for the number of times that each application has been purchased . When this information is combined with an application’s price, and the uniform 30% that Apple pockets on each download, it is possible to know how much Apple is making from the App Store. As of 4PM (PST), that number hovers around $55,000. This is pretty incredible given that the iPhone 2.0 software is not officially available and App Store does not officially open till tomorrow,that bloggers have only been able to access the Apps Store for less than 18 hours, and that the 3G iPhone, with the App store built in out of the box, is not even on sale yet in the United States. If sales of applications stay at the current pace, which they won’t, because they are going to speed up dramatically, the Application Store would still provide Apple with an additional twenty million dollars of revenue per year...