Microsoft drops Facebook and Flickr photo integration from Windows 8.1, rec


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Microsoft drops Facebook and Flickr photo integration from Windows 8.1, recommends official apps

 

One of the selling points of Windows Phone is the tight social integration and ability to pull photos from Facebook into the built-in photo application. Microsoft mimicked this same functionality in Windows 8, but it appears the company is removing some of it for Windows 8.1. Although the photos app in Windows 8.1 has been improved with editing functionality, the app has dropped Facebook and Flickr integration alongside the removal of support for images on network storage.

 

In a posting to Microsoft's community forums, a spokesperson explains that the software maker introduced the Facebook and Flickr integration originally in Windows 8 as very few apps would initially be available. "Now there are many apps in the store that offer ways to view photos on other services," explains the Microsoft spokesperson. "We?re confident Facebook will offer great ways to view and engage socially with photos on Facebook. We welcome Flickr to do the same."

 

The reaction in follow up comments appears to be one of disappointment that Microsoft has retreated from its original vision of combining services into one useful app or hub. Facebook recently committed to building a Windows 8 app, and it's possible Microsoft could be planning to allow the Photos and Facebook apps to share data. The people app in Windows 8.1 will continue to include the usual Facebook integration. We've reached out to Microsoft to confirm whether the decision to remove the Facebook and Flickr photo integration is final, but it certainly appears so from the representative in the community thread.

 

Source: The Verge

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I never used this feature but I appreciated the fact that it could be turned on/off depending on your needs.  Seemed like a good idea that should have been extended to Skydrive and other photo services.

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I'm still befuddled why moving from an 'app free' model to 'moar silo-ed apps' is progress.

 

I love that I could use their core apps to aggregate from such services.  That was part of the elegance of WP7.  How is this better?  Now they are saying they just did it that way because there weren't apps at launch?!  Wasn't such functionality the basis of all those 'smoked by' commercials?  Seriously, WTF?  Is this a signal they are going to remove it from the People app in the future? (There are almost no 3rd party 'linked' account supported anymore via outlook.com either)

 

Or is this just a question of the redundancy of the photos (and video) apps to begin with?

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  • 1 year later...

This not only broke photo integration, but also all messaging integration. To make Facebook messaging even worse, Facebook them-selves moved there messaging into a different app...down another rabbit trail. Where are they hiring these people from?

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ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

first tweetdeck, now this??? why????

Beas me, might have been because the companies who own the official apps (twitter, facebook, yahoo etc) complained because they didn't make any money from these integrations.
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I'm still befuddled why moving from an 'app free' model to 'moar silo-ed apps' is progress.

only reason would be that for updates, os integration requires the os to be updated, whereas with apps, its just an app update.

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