Social Network Integration Removed From Me Hub in WP 8.1; New Facebook App Coming

So far everything about the WP 8.1 leaks has been a breath of fresh air, with many of users long standing demands being answered (and even a file manager of sorts); however there’s one thing that I for one will miss, the social integration in the Me Hub.

According to one of the details in the SDK, social integration to multiple networks via the me hub is gone, (meaning the options above won’t be present), instead if you want to post an update you have to do so through the respective app BOOOO!!!!!

I love sending out tweets from the Me Hub, as it’s so simple and quick to use, you don’t have to launch any apps or worry about loading times, just type and send, sure replying to multiple users was almost impossible but it was nice to have the option. Now users will have to go to the respective twitter/Facebook?linkden apps to post an update. Not only does this seem like a step backwards, but it effectively kills one of Windows Phone’s greatest selling points; but then again it’s not like Microsoft had a whole campaign showing off how easy to update multiple networks at once from WP, while “smoking” other phones… Oh wait (sorry BenThePCGuy).

This comes after another small sharing feature was removed from WP8 that not many people noticed, the ability to set a “favorite” sharing outlet; for example choosing twitter as your preferred sharing outlet in WP 7.5 would allow you to send to the app in a single button (without having to run through the list of possible sharing apps).

It’s not exactly clear what’s going to happen to the notifications in the Me hub, will they remain or have they been replaced by the action center? As well as FB integration into the people and messaging hubs?

On the other hand, a breath of fresh air for FB users on Windows Phone is that a new FB app codenamed “Blue” is on the way. Hopefully it’s smoother than the current beta version and more reliable.

Category: Lumia, Nokia, Windows Phone