Liike Is The Facebook App You've Always Wanted
Liike for Facebook with Chat ($0.99) by Caleb Thorson is a fully-featured app for browsing Facebook on your iPhone or iPad. This is actually one of the best ways to catch up with all of your Facebook friends.
Liike is simple, yet jam-packed with features. And the best thing is that it is not as buggy and glitchy as the official Facebook app. This one is actually designed to look like it belongs on your Apple iDevice.
Once you log in to your Facebook account through this app, you get a minimalistic yet informative view of all your Facebook friend activity.
The bottom has a toolbar that has several different views for you. The News Feed, Profile, Notifications, Messages, and More. In the More tab, you'll find other view options for: Events, Friends, Groups, Pages, Photos, Links, Notes, and even Places. All of these work the way you'd expect them to - a list of all the events you're invited to, groups you're in, your friends, and you can even check-in on Places.
Also from the More tab is the option for Settings. You can edit your account settings, email and SMS information, privacy, and switch accounts. All of this give you the same options as the full web version of Facebook. The option to configure what order the various view options is there if you need it.
The place you probably may spend the most time in is the News Feed. You can switch between Most Recent, Top News, Status, and Photo stories in the news feed by selecting the one you want from the top bar. This is much easier than having to access the scroll wheel in the official app for quick switching of the most commonly used views.
Whatever items appear can be liked or commented on. You can see how many others liked or commented on an item as well. It's all part of the natural Facebook experience.
Viewing profiles looks good as well. The top bar will have three tabs that allow you to access the Wall, Info, and Photos. All that information is there as you'd expect it to be. I prefer the way Liike displays profiles over the official Facebook app because it seems to show much more information about a person, especially the information shown at the top in browsers.
Notifications gives you the most recent activity that has happened on your account. This gives you the basics and only the stuff you need to know - so no thumbnails of profile pictures are shown. I always found that a bit distracting in the official app. Liike makes the notifications always accessible, unlike Facebook, which makes you go back to the "home" view to access this information, since it will appear briefly on the bottom but then disappear.
The Messages view will display your inbox and old chat messages. You can search through these as well, which is nice to have. Composing a new message can be done by tapping the option at the top.
As you use the app, you'll notice a button at the top with a speech bubble on it. This will give you access to Facebook Chat. You can view your active and idle friends. Sending a message feels like the native SMS app on the iPhone or iChat on Mac.
If you ever need to go back to something, pulling the screen up a bit will reveal a Search Facebook bar and forward/backward navigation buttons. Pulling it up more will also reveal that innovative Pull-to-Refresh feature that is now in a lot of apps.
In a sense, Liike feels like it is a native app from Apple to access Facebook. Everything is fast, responsive, and simple. No gaudy blue bar with a logo slapped across it all the time, just a clean and simple interface.
The only problem I have is the fact that I can't seem to get rid of the number badge count on Messages.
So if you're one of the many that get fed up with the constant problems that plague the native Facebook app, then give this app a try. It is a universal binary app and is just what Facebook should be.
Hurry and grab it for the $1 introductory price before it goes up.
Hear that, Mark Zuckerberg? People actually do need a Facebook app for their iPad.
