Facebook, Twitter come to Xbox Live
It might not be as hotly anticipated as the "Beatles: Rock Band" game, but Microsoft announced at its annual press briefing at the E3 Expo that Facebook and Twitter will be coming to the Xbox Live service.
The press event included short demonstrations of what are effectively Facebook and Twitter clients for the gaming console, aesthetically adapted to the Xbox Live interface.
With the Facebook app, which will be a download from Xbox Live, members will be able to engage in a limited number of features including photo browsing, status updates, and looking at friends' profile "streams."
But what's more important to game developers is the fact that the Facebook Connect standard--which was rolled out first to Web developers, and then to iPhone developers--is coming to the Xbox this fall. This means that players will be able to log in with their Facebook accounts and broadcast their gaming activities on their social-network profiles.
Xbox manufacturer Microsoft made a $240 million investment in Facebook in October 2007. The service now has well over 200 million active users around the world.
Both Facebook products are "penciled in for the fall," Facebook platform program manager Gareth Davis told CNET News. He said that while there currently aren't plans to bring Facebook's virtual currency plans to the Xbox, he implied that it's not out of the question. "We're constantly looking at ways of improving the user experience or the developer experience with Facebook credits," Davis said.
This post was updated at 2:26 p.m. PT with comment from Facebook.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
It sounds cool (even obvious) at first -- let's put a browser on the xbox.
But when you think about it, it's gotta be pretty low in the pecking order of cool things to add. I mean, who honestly attaches a keyboard to their console? (I do, but I'm the only person I know of in real life that does that). Without a keyboard the browsing experience would be absolute nonsense. Not to mention that unless you have a 1080p TV with a pretty large diagonal and sit relatively close to it, you might as well be browsing on your mobile phone - the fonts would have to be that large to read them).
- by LolaBunny1995 June 11, 2009 10:59 PM PDT
- What about adding sites like Myspace and Hi5 to that list as well. People only join Twitter to see what people like John Mayer and Ashton Kutcher have to say, and with 2 million plus members, the I hate the New Facebook group is very quickly outnumbering the I really adore Facebook as a whole anyway. Myspace and Hi5 are the only real viable alternatives.
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