Microsoft Removes Facebook and Twitter Apps from Xbox Live

Up to this moment, the giant software company still lists the apps as available at the Xbox Live page, but they are no longer listed in the Xbox marketplace.  New users will not be able to access the apps on Xbox 360, but existing users who have downloaded and installed the apps can still run them.

Facebook and Twitter apps have been available on Xbox Live since 2009. However, the two apps could not work optimally because there was no browser available, which disenabled users to open links.

Starting yesterday, Tuesday October 23rd, Xbox 360 dashboard update will be rolled out to Xbox Live members. According to Xbox Life’s blog, Major Nelson, the updates of Xbox 360 will include:

• Refreshed Xbox 360 Dashboard, including an updated layout with more tiles, a combined TV & Movies channel and a Sports destination (in the US).
• Pinning. Pinning lets users to personalize the dashboard by saving your favorite movies, TV shows, games, music, videos and websites right to the home screen. It’s as easy as opening an app or a favorite movie and clicking “pin”.
• Internet Explorer for Xbox. With Internet Explorer on Xbox, you can easily find and view internet content on the biggest screen in the house, including HTML5 videos. Pin your favorite pages directly to the web hub or the dashboard.
• Recommendations and Ratings. Recommendations will allow you to discover new movies, TV shows and games, generated based on a number of variables including the content you previously viewed, what your friends are consuming and what is most relevant and popular with our Xbox community. You can now rate content yourself and also see Rotten Tomatoes ratings.
• Xbox Video. Formerly called Zune Video Marketplace, Xbox Video offers hundreds of thousands of TV shows and movies for buying or renting in instant HD streaming.
• Recent. Previously called Quick Play, the recent view gives you a list of movies, games, apps or other types of content that you most recently accessed on the console.
• Enhanced Search. The last Xbox LIVE update brought Bing voice search to Xbox so you could use voice to search for movies, TV shows, actors, directors and artists. New genre search has been added to the list, such as action, comedy, romance, drama or sci-fi. Bing voice search now includes results for video across the Web and YouTube.
• International Expansion of Voice Search. The Kinect voice search capabilities is now expanded to 9 new countries – Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Ireland.

^{New Xbox 360 update (Source: Larry Hryb)}