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Facebook iOS update improves messaging, photos

The social network's updated iOS app boasts additional messaging features, a new way to upload multiple photos faster and easy access to Facebook Gifts.

Donna Tam Staff Writer / News
Donna Tam covers Amazon and other fun stuff for CNET News. She is a San Francisco native who enjoys feasting, merrymaking, checking her Gmail and reading her Kindle.
Donna Tam
2 min read
Facebook

Facebook hopes to make it easier to for users to chat and upload multiple photos on their mobile devices through a new iOS app released today.

In addition, the camera feature lets users add different filters to their photos, a la Instagram -- owned by Facebook. Twitter is also moving to add photo filters to its mobile app in a bid to stay competitive.

For messaging, you can swipe to the left anywhere in the app to see who's available for messaging, and mark friends you message the most in your Favorites. Facebook says the new Camera upload process is a faster way to upload multiple photos.

In addition to the new messaging and photo features, Facebook adds improvements to Facebook Gifts' function for its iOS 5.1 update. This means a user can give a gift directly by going to a friend's Timeline and hitting the new "Give Gift" button.

The social network has been increasing the prominence of its new gift-giving service, most recently with a tweak to its Android app.

Facebook Gifts has been another way for the social network to raise more mobile dollars -- something it needs to do to keep investors happy. Facebook, like other online companies, is recognizing the rapid growth of mobile as users shift away from desktops.

The company has vowed to keep up with this mobile growth by updating its mobile apps frequently and speedily.

This latest update is available in the App Store.

Updated at 7:13 a.m. PT on Nov. 6: to include details about Facebook's new filter feature in its updated iOS app.