Facebook is making a deeper push onto the now surging Android platform with the release of the Facebook software development kit for Android.

The Facebook SDK for Android is the first one for mobile that includes the new Open Graph API. While Facebook does have support for iPhone through Facebook Connect, it will eventually be replaced by a full iPhone SDK as part of the end of Facebook Connect. Facebook tells us that the iPhone SDK is in development and will be available “soon.”

In a short blog post announcing the release of the Android SDK, Facebook pointed out that it includes OAUth 2.0 support and gives developers the ability to publish stories back to Facebook, in addition to access to the Open Graph platform.

Facebook first demonstrated the new SDK at Google I/O last week, which could be the reason why it chose to focus on Android first. Still, the iPhone has more users and Facebook is one of the most popular apps in the iPhone app store, so we expect that the Facebook SDK for iPhone isn’t too far behind.

Tags: android, facebook, SDK

Facebook announced that the following features will be available immediately:

• Strong authentication using OAuth 2.0
• Making requests to the new Graph API
• Publishing stories back to Facebook via Feed forms

Read more about the details of the release at the Facebook Blog.

Facebook at Google I/O Developer Conference

I chatted Charles Wu, Facebook’s program manager for mobile, at Google’s Developer Sandbox. Steven Soneff, a Stanford Graduate student intern for Facebook, also gave me an in depth technical walk through of his work on the Android developer tool.

Facebook’s Goal At Google I/O

Facebook’s goal is to find interesting game and app developers to try out the new Android SDK. Facebook is showing select developers their vision of where they are going on Android. When Facebook gets developer feedback, they will massage the new technology. Once Facebook is satisfied that people are happy with their new Android developer tools, they will open it up as an official SDK.

Facebook’s Software Developer Kit (SDK) for Android

Facebook’s SDK for Android is like the Facebook SDK for the iPhone, but better. Its more advanced, implementing Faceboook’s newly announced Graph API and other new features like deep linking. Facebook’s goal is to make it easy for developers to put Facebook in their app, using a native SDK for Android.

You can drop in a Connect button in your application, and authenticate users with OAuth 2.0 – then your app can access Facebook’s new Open Graph initiative.

Data privacy issues are reduced, because you users are logged into Facebook and you access their permission settings.

Its clear to users what’s happening, because they actually switch back and forth between your app and the Facebook for Android app when accessing core Facebook features.

Facebook highlighted three things about its Android developer tool:

1. Authorizing users with OAuth 2.0
2. Calling to Facebook APIs from Android
3. Deep linking between apps and Facebook

OAuth 2.0 User Authentication

The Facebook SDK encapsulates OAuth’s complicated authentication process.

For developers, it looked pretty simple to create and store an authentication token with the new SDK.

For app users, it was completely seamless – happening behind the scenes when they clicked a Facebook Connect button.

The programming process for Java programmers:

1. Instantiate a Facebook object
2. Authorize the Facebook object
3. Get an authorization token
4. Make requests using the token

Calling Facebook APIs from Android

The Facebook Android SDK creates Android “wrappers” for existing web services – Facebook’s RESTful APIs, and Open Graph APIs.

Developers can do anything they like with the new Graph API. Also, all the usual Facebook API calls app developers use to make apps on Facebook.com also work on Android devices – like the API calls to get friend lists, make wall posts and publish into a user’s stream on Facebook.

Deep linking to Facebook on Android

Facebook now lets Android app developers link deep into Facebook apps. This means that Android apps can create a seemless experience integrating their apps and Facebook, directly accessing specific parts of a users Facebook app, deep within the Facebook app’s navigation.

Example of deep linking into Facebook Apps:

If a user is playing a game and wants to check out another player’s Facebook profile – they simply click a button and the profile page displays on their phone. The users do not have to navigate within their Facebook app to find the right information, it simply appears.

Of course, the Android app developer sets up this experience by programming where the user should drop into their Facebook app. The important point is that Android app developers can now prewire this integrated Facebook app experience using the new Facebook app for Android SDK.

Developers can check out the new tool here: http://github.com/facebook

Update
As some commenters pointed out, it appears as no Android SDK is on the site yet (although we’d expect it to be posted shortly). Below is the slide at Google I/O where we learned about the new SDK.

If you want to stay on top of the best practices for integrating Facebook and other social features into mobile experiences, come to our Social Developer Summit, taking place on June 29th in San Francisco, CA.

This week, social media news was dominated by three things: Facebook privacy concerns, Twitter troubles and one seriously golden girl, Betty White.

If you missed anything over the course of the last seven days — we know, the thought of losing all your Twitter followers was so tragic as to be totally debilitating — we’ve got all the top stories right here. Read up, get educated and wow all your Twitter followers (who have been thankfully restored) with your ample knowledge of all things social media and tech.

1). Betty White on “Saturday Night Live”: Every Single Sketch: Betty White hosted Saturday Night Live, realizing the dreams of more than 500,000 Facebook users. Reception from fans and critics alike was mostly positive, and a day later White’s gig led Google searches and Twitter conversations.

2). Twitter Bug Lets You Control Who Follows You: Twitter had an embarrassing bug on its hands –- one that allowed users to make anyone follow them.

3). Another Next Generation iPhone Found, Dissected: A company generally well-known for its secrecy, Apple has been losing the next generation iPhone left and right; this time, a slew of images and a video of another iPhone 4G prototype appeared on a Vietnamese site.

4). AT&T Has iPhone Exclusivity Until 2012: It was speculative before given the lack of independent confirmation, but now apparently Apple has gone on record to confirm that the original deal signed with AT&T for iPhone exclusivity back in 2007 was a five-year deal.

5). Google and Verizon to Launch Tablet Computer: Add a big new twist to the tablet computing wars. The Wall Street Journal is confirming that Google plans to bring a tablet computer to market with Verizon Wireless.

6). NYU Students Raise More than $100,000 to Build Facebook Alternative: Four New York University students have a vision to build Diaspora, “an open source personal web service that will put individuals in control of their data,” or essentially the anti-Facebook.

7). Adobe Responds to Apple’s Attacks on Flash with New Ad Campaign: Two weeks ago, Steve Jobs published his now infamous “Thoughts on Flash” memo on Apple.com. Adobe has now responded with its own message, a message of “love,” “choice” and “open markets.”

8). Obama: iPads Make Information a Distraction: Although before his inauguration U.S. President Barack Obama was rarely seen without his BlackBerry, he has criticized the current crop of popular consumer gadgets for helping make information a “distraction.”

9). BlackBerry Tablet to Launch This Year: Research in Motion is set to enter the tablet computing market with plans to unveil a 8.9-inch BlackBerry device later this year.

10. Android Now Outselling iPhone: Smartphones carrying Google’s Android operating system outsold the iPhone in the first quarter of 2010, according to new research from NPD.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Antagain

Tags: adobe, android, apple, blackberry, facebook, Flash, Google, ipad, iphone, television, twitter

This series is supported by The Poynter Institute’s Mobile Media blog – your guide to the intersection of mobile and media. Sign up to receive the blog in newsletter format and be entered into a drawing to win an iPad at Poynter.org/ipadgiveaway.

Listen up, journalists — your cellphone is more than just a channel by which to reach sources, your editor and sustenance (you have the local Thai joint on speed dial, don’t front): It’s an essential tool for both local news-gathering and dissemination.

Mashable talked to reporters, publications and experts in the field to get the lowdown on how your cell is affecting local news coverage. We might not be able to get you to change your ring tone — “Poker Face,” really? — but we hope we can change how you’re using your iPhone, Droid, Palm or BlackBerry.

Read on for some actionable ideas for how you can make your mobile more than just another channel by which your mother can nag you about how you should have been a lawyer instead.

An Army of Citizen Journalists

If the recent spat of natural disasters and uprisings have proven anything, it’s that when it comes to local news coverage, audience engagement is truly an asset. Although the advent of the mojo (mobile journalist) is truly upon us — journalists are increasingly using mobile phones to collect video and photos and even to file stories — we also have a veritable army of citizen journalists out there armed with their own increasingly more advanced reporting tools: mobile phones. And, as we have seen, they’re more than eager to help a journo out.

Take, for example, the meteorite that zoomed over the Midwest back in April. Immediately after the event transpired, news stations took to Twitter in an attempt to get TwitPics and footage of the occurrence. Among the most successful was local Wisconsin news outlet, WISCTV_News3, who garnered an ample collection of cellphone pictures and YouTube videos.

According to News Director Colin Benedict, the rapid influx of content was due, in part, to the strong relationship the station already had with its viewers. “We use Twitter and Facebook every single day in our newscast,” he says. “Because when those big events happen, you have to have that relationship built already. We need to be in these spaces because that’s where our viewers are.”

Although the station doesn’t yet have a smartphone app -– it’s working on it –- it does have a distinct advantage when snagging this citizen footage: familiarity.

Parker Polidor — the president of Cell Journalist, a platform that allows folks to easily submit video from cellphones and other devices to local news stations –- would agree. Cell Journalist has 85 clients countrywide, and was instrumental in furnishing user footage during the flooding in Nashville, Tennessee, at the beginning of May.

“On a local TV level, this is where [local media] has a distinct advantage over all other forms of media,” he says. “When they issue the on-air call to action, they get flooded with content –- no pun intended. Over the course of that weekend, we received a little over 40,000 pieces of content submitted here in Nashville and a couple thousand in Memphis.”

By submitting footage like this to local stations, viewers and consumers feel like they’re a part of the story. “Any time a user sees their content on air, that gives them motivation to submit more content,” Polidor says. So, it would behoove the local reporter, station or paper to use social media to connect with these walking camera men and women, who make for excellent sources of information when disaster strikes.

Using Geolocation to Crowdsource

There is a distinct untapped market here when it comes to mobile crowdsourcing: geolocation (i.e. tools like Foursquare, Gowalla, etc). Your first thought here might be: “Why do I care who’s checking in at Chipotle at any given moment?” And we would agree — for the most part. But think about how tools like these could be used creatively. For example, Tracy Swartz, a journalist for Chicago’s RedEye paper, has found a novel use for Foursquare: She’s a transit reporter, so she scours checkins at various subway stations for news about delays, fare jumpers and track conditions.

This is only one way in which a journalist has figured out how to use the location-based tool. Now think how helpful Foursquare could be for a food reviewer (I’ve seen people mention things like vermin in checkins at various restaurants and bars), a crime reporter (I can easily see someone reporting gang activity or shots fired via a Foursquare checkin) or even an entertainment reporter (tons of people usually equates to something cool –- find out which concerts and music venues are racking up the checkins and proceed accordingly).

As more and more people get hip to Foursquare in your community –- 40 million checkins ain’t bad –- we would suggest becoming early adopters. Download this tool and start digging -– at the very least, you’ll score a mayorship and some serious street cred among the tech cool kids.

Putting Mobile First

I have a vivid memory of my grad school dean holding up his cellphone during various assemblies, imploring us to start thinking about how we’re going to get the news on “this,” rather than “this” –- the latter “this” being a newspaper. Back then, my immediate reaction was: “Ha, what? Who wants to read a story on a tiny screen?” Well, two years later, and I’m eating that thought bubble.

Although smartphone use is not as widespread among the majority of average consumers as it is within, say, the tech community — of the top five mobile phone manufacturers, only Motorola and RIM have made significant inroads in the smartphone space in the U.S. –- it is growing. And with more and more handsets and form factors on the market, the mobile space is indeed important when it comes to news dissemination (hell, the iPad sold one million units in the first month — that’s a huge market for mobile offerings right there). Still, at present, the space is a true work in progress.

Reporters and publications have to start thinking of the news in terms of “mobile first” –- i.e. Thinking about how to distribute content via mobile devices first, said Stephen Buttry, director of community engagement for TBD.com (a soon-to-be-launched digital local news operation covering the Washington area for Allbritton Communications).

“News organizations need to move quickly, and looking back on our history with the web, we know their tendency is not to move quickly,” he says. “It was easily 10 years or more into the history of news on the web that we even started hearing ‘web-first.’ … If we don’t make mobile our first priority, we’re going to screw it up like we did with the web.”

Folks like David Beard, editor of The Boston Globe’s Boston.com, have seen firsthand how quickly the news delivery landscape has changed. “When I took this job maybe two years ago, I was mostly the browser guy,” he says. “We had e-mail alerts and text alerts and not much more. Now we’re on five or six different platforms.”

Currently, Boston.com has two iPhone apps — a news app and a photo blog app called The Big Picture — and Beard says they’re doing fairly well. “We’re up triple the mobile pageviews this year from last year at this time,” he explains. Boston.com is also currently working on an iPad app.

Still, the local website, like myriad other sites, has a lot of obstacles to overcome when it comes to making inroads in the mobile space: deciding whether or not to adapt to more than one platform (Android, Palm, etc), as well as weathering the battle between Adobe and Apple.

(It would be an entire other feature at this juncture to get into the whole Flash vs. HTML debate, but suffice it to say that many publications are trying to figure out the best way to get video on mobile handsets. According to Jeff Whatcott, SVP of marketing at popular video platform Brightcove, “When the iPad came out… we actually had so many requests coming in from so many customers that we decided it would be most efficient to just book a hotel room in New York, and we did the same thing in London, to get all of our customers together. That was something we haven’t seen before.”)

Still, folks like Buttry are not impressed with most local news apps –- which aren’t really that different from their mobile sites (which are essentially the website shrunk down to fit a smaller screen). Yet he sees any local news site with an app as moving in the right direction. “I’m glad that they’re getting their feet wet,” he says. “Because those are skills and experiences they need to develop. And if the first one is pretty lame, that’s OK –- don’t stop there. Because the first news story you wrote was pretty lame.”

Taking Advantage of Location-Aware Abilities

Again, however, having an app is only the beginning of the story. What we have not yet fully realized is the location-aware nature of the mobile phone and how vital that is when it comes to delivering local news.

According to Amy L. Webb, CEO and principal of Webbmedia Group, LLC, “If you encode your content correctly –- to really be able to deliver people real-time news that’s about where they are at that moment — that’s hyperlocal news that makes sense. The problem is that most news organizations aren’t thinking that way. They’re still thinking in terms of zip codes.” What she means is that we have the ability to tie news to exact street corners, and we should be taking advantage of that.

Recently, we’ve seen several brands and publications making partnerships with Foursquare in an attempt to make ample use of geo-location. The Wall Street Journal is probably the most notable example of late. Basically, the paper’s partnership with the location-based service allows readers to collect badges for checking in at various New York locations, but –- more interestingly –- it also seeks to integrate news consumption into the game.

For example, the publication has added tips to places like Yankee Stadium that include facts about the location as well as links to stories. In fact, just the other week, The Wall Street Journal broke the news about a suspicious package found in Times Square via a Foursquare tip. Essentially, the publication is bringing us the news in a whole new way –- instead of reading stories for pleasure or leisure (via the printed page) or searching for information (via the web), The WSJ is making news dissemination about discovery.

Of course, it may be prudent at this point to recall that Foursquare only has around one million members, so it’s probably not the best way to reach your entire audience at present, but it’s this kind of innovation that people like Webb hope to see more publications experimenting with.

The same goes for aggregators on mobile platforms, which seek to bring a location-specific array of news to consumers. EveryBlock –- which is basically the granddaddy of location-based news aggregators –- has matured and developed over the years, adding a location-aware iPhone app that delivers a selection of local news to your handset. Newer services, like Fwix –- whose iPad app has been a huge success –- are seeking to do the same thing.

These services seek to provide users with the most information — from the most sources — about a given location. “Local news has to come from a ton of different sources,” says Fwix founder Darian Shirazi. “It just can’t come from one source anymore. We’ve been a central location to collect all that news together.” EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty would agree, “The more location-specific news there is, the better position we’re in, because we aggregate all that,” he says. “We love the fact that Twitter has launched geo-coding Tweets, because, in theory, it means there’s more geo-coded news out there.”

Still, the question, again, becomes: Will the average person use such a service? Webb doesn’t think so. “I think that people want local content for sure –- we know that they do,” she says. “The problem is that they want it in a way that makes sense to them. You can aggregate all you want, but at the end of the day, people want accessible, critical, niche local content that makes sense to them that’s relevant that depends on where they are.”

What All This Means for You, The Journalist

The fact of the matter is: Mobile technology is moving at a breakneck speed. Handsets that are hot at one moment may be completely incompatible with all the newest software a couple of months down the road. So the takeaway here is that you have to be aware of the changing landscape and adjust accordingly, but you don’t have to be a tech fiend.

When it comes to innovations and services like geo-location and the iPad and various and sundry apps, make sure that they are on your radar. Use the ones that suit your needs and at least test out the others. Casting an eye to the horizon –- while also keeping your feet square on terra firma –- is essential to staying relevant in the local news game.

This post is part of a Mashable series providing analysis of how mobile use impacts journalism. The series is supported by The Poynter Institute’s Mobile Media blog – your guide to the intersection of mobile and media. Sign up to receive our blog in newsletter format and be entered into a drawing to win an iPad. Learn more at Poynter.org/ipadgiveaway.

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, oonal, petesaloutos

[img credit: tomsun, nan palmero, edans, CarbonNYC]

Tags: android, foursquare, iphone, journalism, Journalist, media, Mobile 2.0, mobile media series, social media, twitter

While Facebook didn’t develop the Android application in house, this time around, the company is rapidly expanding its mobile presence and has expressed a desire to have native developer libraries for all mobile platforms. There has also been speculation that Facebook’s mobile applications will turn into platforms within themselves as they have so many users, although Facebook has yet to confirm such plans.

Let us know if you get the opportunity to test out the Android Facebook application. We’ll also be sure to post any updates that we receive from Facebook this evening.

Facebook has confirmed the launch of the new app with us. Here’s what the official blurb about the app says, according to Android Guys:

Facebook for Android™ makes it easy to stay connected and share information with friends. You can share status updates from your home screen, check out your news feed, look at your friends’ walls and user info. Share photos from your phone and can even look up up to 125 friends’ phone numbers from the home screen.

We’ll be taking a closer look at it tonight.

Rumors have been going around for months about a Facebook-Android app; some have wondered about the partnership given the competitive positions of Google and Facebook.

Meanwhile, Facebook has also been upping its mobile effort. Last week, it released Facebook Connect for mobile web services — and soon, apps. Through Connect, third parties will be able to access user data from Facebook and enable two-way interactions so users can communicate back to the site. At least one third party, social game developer Playfish, has had their own, unofficial implementation of Connect for months.

Facebook has also been building apps for a wide variety of phones and operating systems, including for Nokia’s N97 and the extremely popular iPhone application.