TechCrunch reports that Facebook will be integrated into iOS 6, just like Twitter was integrated into iOS 5.
Apple and Facebook have been in talks for quite sometime. In fact, according to some reports, Apple had fully integrated Facebook into iOS 4 back in 2010, and was ready to launch the mobile-social fusion when API negotiations broke down.
It looked like Apple and Facebook had patched things up as Tim Cook hinted at the possibility of Facebook integration coming to iOS 6 earlier in the week at AllThingsD’s D10 conference. When he was asked “What is going on between you and Facebook?” by Mossberg, Tim Cook had this to say:
For us, we want to provide customers simple and elegant ways to do the things they want to do. Facebook has hundreds of millions of customers. So, anyone that has an iPhone or iPad, we want them to have the best experience with Facebook on those platforms.
So stay tuned.
MG Siegler of TechCrunch reports:
It’s important to note that Apple being Apple, something could change in the next week and a half (see again: Facebook/Ping). But as of right now, Facebook is a go in iOS “Sundance”. One thing still being hammered out according to our sources is exactly how sharing will work. Sharing is the other big part of the iOS/Twitter integration, and will be important for iOS/Facebook integration as well. But Facebook is significantly more complicated than Twitter in that there are all kinds of permissions for what you can post where and who can see what. And Open Graph adds another layer of complexity to all of this.
It is not clear how the Facebook integration will work, but users should be able to post status updates, share photos and videos from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, and Maps. It remains to be seen how Apple and Facebook handle the complexity introduced by privacy controls etc.
