Thursday, May 16, 2013

Now Google Glass Can Post Facebook Photos

On Thursday, the social network unveiled an app for Google’s wearable computing system that will allow users to upload photos taken with their Google Glass headset to Facebook.  In addition to photos, people can add text as descriptions for their images. Facebook said the announcement, made at Google’s developer conference on Thursday morning, was a first step for the social network, as it looks at new types of mobile hardware.
“Wearable computing as a category is pretty exciting ,“ said Erick Tseng, a Facebook mobile product manager in an interview.
Tseng, who is a former lead product manager for Android, Google’s mobile operating system, said the partnership was borne out of casual talks with his former colleagues and friends at Google. While Tseng said he wasn’t sure how wearable computers will impact Facebook in the future, he said there was clearly a larger  trend of “computing becoming more miniaturized.”
For future updates, the team is looking into sharing information with Google glass, such as notifications.
Facebook joins several other social network services, such as Twitter and Path, which have also been developing apps for Glass.
Although Facebook is in many ways a top rival of Google, its lack of in-house hardware has pushed the company to dive deeper into Google’s products. In April, for instance, the company unveiled a version of its Android application that takes over the home screen of Android phones and more prominently displays Facebook services, such as chat messaging, photos and news feed. Those efforts, however, have hit some bumps. The app took several weeks to hit a million downloads and the reviews have been lukewarm AT&T T -0.40% recently slashed the price of the HTC Home, the first phone created to be optimized for the new Facebook experience on Android, from $99 to 99 cents.
According to Tseng, despite areas of competition, “it’s almost inevitable that that partnership [between Facebook and Google] will grow tighter and tighter.”

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