According to Facebook’s stats, over 543 million of their active users, as of June this year, access the social media site on the mobile Web through their apps. Through these, users are able to connect and engage with their friends and family on their smartphones and tablets even when on-the-go. With mobile as one of Facebook’s top focuses, the social media giant has unveiled a newly overhauled Facebook app to further improve user experience.

“Today we’re announcing an update to the Facebook app for iPhone and iPad that makes keeping up with friends faster and easier.” said Facebook product manager Mick Johnson on the announcement. “Facebook 5.0 for iOS is twice as fast as the previous version when launching the app, scrolling through news feed and opening photos in feed.”

Version 5.0 is a dev revamp of the Facebook app for iOS devices, focusing on making access and navigations significantly faster. This is in response to past criticisms that users have been noticing the app to be slow and unresponsive at times. But instead of simply slapping on some under-the-hood enhancements, they opted to reconstruct the app from scratch to streamline in-app operations and create a speedier user experience.

With the overhaul, users will notice that—

• The app launches faster than before
• Scrolling down your newsfeed is smoother, with shared stories and status updates loading immediately as you go past them. A banner has also been added to let you know when new stories come in. Tap on it and the latest updates will be displayed.
• Images load quickly with a tap on the thumbnails, and close down with a downward swipe.

This new update obviously makes it easier for brands on the social network to access and manage their pages, interact with their followers, and monitor the progress of their Facebook-driven campaigns.

To update to the new Facebook app (if you still haven’t received the text from Facebook with the update link), you can head on over to the App Store to update it yourself.

Tags: Facebook, Facebook Mobile, Mobile Marketing, social media marketing, social media tools