Facebook for iPhone can now change its news feed appearance instantly

The official Facebook client for the iPhone was updated recently and one salient change was an improved News feed. On the surface, the news feed changes appeared minimal, but behind the scenes Facebook re-worked the background mechanism that pulls in this status information.

According to Inside Facebook, the iPhone client reportedly now pulls its News Feed information from Facebook's mobile website, m.facebook.com. This server-side mechanism lets the social network make changes to the News Feed without modifying a single line of code on the device. All changes can be made to the backend server and reflected on the iPhone instantly. This system lets Facebook update their app without pushing a new version through the App Store for approval and lets it respond to feature requests and complaints at a faster rate. Pretty cool, eh?