Google has begun beta testing a new social network called Google+. At the moment it’s only available to a handful of beta testers, but when it rolls out to the public Google+ will represent the search company’s biggest foray into the social space. Google has dipped its toe into social waters before with tools such as Latitude and Buzz. But Google+ is the closest thing you’re going to get to a Facebook competitor from Google.

Just moments after sending out the first invitations to the service Google launched an official app for Android. It doesn’t offer all of the feature you get when visiting plus.google.com in a desktop web browser, but it does have a clean, easy to use interface and support for one killer feature: Google+ for Android can automatically upload photos and videos from your mobile device as soon as you finish shooting them. Automatic uploads are opt-in though, so if you don’t want to share your pictures with the world you don’t have to.

The mobile app also supports location-based checkins and geotagging for your posts.

Update: Google has finally released an iOS app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. It offers most of the features you’ll find in the Android app, but it doesn’t support automatic photo uploads. 

There’s no iOS app yet, but Google has rolled out a mobile web site which offers most of the features you get from a native app. The only things missing are support for native notifications and automatic media uploads. You can still see notifications using the mobile web app though — you just have to actively click on the notifications link.

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Apple has been busy pushing its official Twitter clients for mobile platforms including iOS, Android, and Blackberry — but that hasn’t stopped third party developers from creating their own Twitter apps. The blogosphere and Twittersphere is abuzz today with the news that a new app called TweetBot takes the whole Twitter experience to a new level.

The app is attractive and choc full of features for power users. If you’re not a power user, you might want to stick with Twitters’ free app since TweetBot will set you back $1.99. But here’s what you get for the price:

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After several months of beta testing, LinkedIn has released a mobile app for Google Android. The LinkediIn app is now available as a free download from the Android Market. You can also get a direct link by visiting m.linkedin.com/android.

LinkedIn is a social network for professionals, with a heavy focus on your work profile and your connections to current and former colleagues and business contacts.

The company has spruced up the app a bit since launching the beta test. The new version includes support for messages, as well as a “reconnect” button which helps you find people you may know based on your profile and connections.

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Facebook has just released an updated version of its iPhone app which adds the ability to check in to events. Whereas previously, the app only allows you to check in via Facebook Places, the new version now extends beyond this and allows you to check in to events you’ve been invited to.

Of course, to check in to an event, you must be in the location specified in the invitation. So, you can’t test it right now for events you’re attending unless that event is happening right now and you are actually in the location. But if you want to try this new feature, you can create a test event and see if it works for you. You’ll see the check in button right on the events page as well as a “Here Now” after right after you’ve checked in to an event to see who else have checked in to the same event.

Facebook 3.2 for iPhone also now lets you view friends on a map. You can see the Map tab side by side with the previously available Activity tab to find out where your friends have recently checked in via Google Maps.  The new version of the app also lets you unfriend a Facebook contact from your phone.

Other new features added include a better News Feed and notifications. Facebook for iPhone is available as a free download from the iTunes App Store. If you’ve downloaded it before, simply the Update button to get the new version.

via Techcrunch

As expected, Facebook 2.0 beta for BlackBerry is now available, and among other features, it adds support for Facebook Chat.

The Facebook app for BlackBerry is tightly integrated into the OS, so you can start a chat with your contacts who are online either from the Facebook app or from the unified mailbox on your smartphone. You’ll also receive status notifications from Facebook even if the app isn’t currently running.

The news feed section of the app has also been updated to make it easier to scroll, add photos, or check in to a place. Notifications and navigation have been redesigned as well.

You can find more information at the Inside BlackBerry blog. Facebook 2.0 beta for BlackBerry is available as a free download from the BlackBerry Beta Zone.

Facebook has released version 1.5.2 of its Android app, with a couple of bug fixes and security improvements. But the biggest changes are improvements to landscape mode and some new photo features.

Users can now upload photos to a friend’s wall, or to a Group. And when you upload a photo, it should now always show up on Facebook with the proper orientation (landscape or portrait).

To upload a photo to a wall, just click the camera button to choose a photo from the Gallery app or to capture a new picture with your camera.

Facebook 1.5.2 for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market.

via reddit

Ssocial photo-sharing app Path has been updated to version 1.4.  Path is similar in many ways to Instagram, as it lets you take photos using your iPhone and share it to other Path users. Unlike Instagram, Path lets you select only up to 50 of  friends, family and other contacts to have exlusive rights of seeing photos you share.  Another difference between Path and Instagram is that Path lets you share short videos as well.

One thing that Path doesn’t let you do which you can with Instagram is to apply the cool photo filters.

To help you in filling up the 50 slots for your Path’s contacts, the app can pull out your close friends and family in Facebook. But that’s as far as the app goes when it comes to integrating with Facebook. Don’t expect the app to share your updates to your Facebook account later on.

New features in Path 1.4 include the ability to chat with your close friends and family in real time. You can also now share photos and videos you’ve captured using your iPhone via email. This is useful for your friends and family who are not using Path on their iPhone yet. The app was also made faster and more reliable with the update.

Here’s a quick rundown of the some of the other new features added recently:

• Path emotion was added to let you show how you feel after sharing photos or videos
• Sharing up to 10 seconds of video moments
• Push notifications
• Sharing of existing photos from your iPhone’s camera roll
• Full screen view for share photos
• View most recently tagged contacts
• iPod Touch support

Path is available as a free download from the App Store.

The latest version of Seesmic for Android is out, and the biggest change is that the social networking app now supports Facebook. That means you can use one app to keep up with the latest news from your Facebook and Twitter contacts. The app also supports Google Buzz and Salesforce Chatter.

There’s no unified news feed, which means you’ll have to choose which account you want to view. But you can use Seesmic to access multiple Twitter of Facebook accounts if you like.

The Facebook view offers the ability to check your news feed, view your friends list, see pages you like, and access your Facebook wall. You can also use the app to “like,” share, or comment on updates, view your friends’ profiles, or post your own status updates.

Seesmic has added support for TwitLonger to the Twitter portion of the app, allowing you to post messages that are longer than 140 characters (although your followers will have to click a link to read the whole thing).

Seesmic 1.6 also supports inline comments for Salesforce Chatter and Google Buzz, the Goo.gl URL shortener, and allows you to see a list of people that have retweeted a tweet.

There are also new home screen widgets, allowing you to set up separate Seesmic widgets for Facebook, Twitter, Chatter, or Buzz.

I’ve tested Seesmic a few times in the past, but I’ve never found it to offer many features that made it more valuable than the official Facebook or Twitter apps for Android. But Twitter has become a bit of a resource hog recently, taking up well over 15MB of data on my phone. After playing around with Seesmic a bit today, it’s using just 4MB of disk space, so I’m going to test it for at least a few days to see if it continues to use less storage than the official Twitter app.

Seesmic for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market. The app supports Google Android 1.5 and up.