A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to score a preview pass for the upcoming Twitter/Facebook/Last.fm update, and after using it for a few weeks, I have really come to enjoy the new features.  However, there is one huge flaw in the update that rears its head fast, and totally kills the whole experience at times.

First off, the preview update for the Xbox Live Dashboard makes a few changes to your interface.  Added to the interface are a Music blade, and another called Community.  In the community section holds the Twitter and Facebook applications, while the Music toolbar holds the Last.fm application.  Accessing each of the apps is as simple as entering your information and launching the application.  Facebook does require a download, as did Last.fm, but Twitter worked right after the update as soon as I logged in.

For Facebook and Twitter, you actually open an application on the Xbox 360, and keeps a lot of those apps features separate from the day to day Xbox Live Dashboard experience.  The fear of receiving tweets non-stop while playing a game did not happen, as you actually had to be in the application to get tweets.  The same is true of Facebook.  Twitter restricts you to 50 tweets in the queue at a time, while Facebook allows you to change your status, view pictures, post to someone’s profile and view all of your friends.

Last.fm is also a separate application, but it seems to be more integrated into the dashboard.  You can add stations, browse stations and listen to music in the background from Last.fm while you navigate the dashboard.  You cannot delete favorites via the console.  It seems that the feature is locked to the PC side of the application.  The streaming works very well, and I never really had any issues adding content via the 360.  It also showed songs I had recently listened to on my PC through the Last.fm database.

All of these applications work great, and add some usefulness to your Xbox Live experience, with two notable exceptions.  The first is that there is no integration into the dashboard itself.  Why can I not send screenshots to Twitter or Facebook?  One of the things I love about Twitter is the ability to send a screenshot or picture so everyone can see it.  The same thing in Facebook.  Why does it not update your status with what you are playing, or allow pictures to post up as you take them in game?  The bigger issue, and the one that will affect heavy Twitter and Facebook users, is that anything with an Internet link embedded is absolutely useless.  Why show me a link when I cannot click on it.  This became a huge hinderance to my enjoyment of Twitter.  I get tons of links via Twitter that I want to browse, and you cannot use any of them, due to the lack of a browser on the Xbox 360.  Without an added browser, these apps will most likely just sit on my console, rarely getting used.  Last.fm might, as I can use it to listen to music in my driving games, but I can do the same thing via streaming from my computer.

Overall, the apps are nice, and they do not interfere with the current Dashboard, but their lack of real use ended up killing the whole experience.  My wife like being able to view pictures from Facebook on our large 60″ screen TV, but beyond that, she has never really gone back to Facebook on the 360, and I have opened Twitter three times total, as I get frustrated after the fourth link I receive that I cannot open.  Microsoft will need to add a browser at some point to make these apps useful, or find a way to bridge interactivity between them and the games we play.  Otherwise, you might as well just remove them from production already.