One of the defining features of Microsoft’s approach to the Xbox 360 has been the company’s commitment to incrementally improve the console’s capabilities not via hardware upgrades but through firmware updates. This was most dramatically illustrated by last year’s comprehensive overhaul of the dashboard in the form of the New Xbox Experience, which brought a bevy of new features to the table, not least a brand-new interface, game installing, and avatars.

However, just about all of the low-hanging fruit must surely have been consumed by now. Just about all of the features that Xbox owners have been crying out for have long since been delivered. So what do you give the console that seems to have it all? Increased social network functionality is Microsoft’s answer. Thanks to Microsoft’s technical wizardry, I’ve been able to put the new update through its paces around a month in advance of its release to the general Xbox Live community.

And whilst integration of social networks du jour Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm seem like obvious additions (everybody’s doing it, innit?, I was left just a little underwhelmed by the implementation.

Ah, Facebook. Anything that brought Farmville to the world can’t be all that good.

Considering that the NXE interface was designed in order to promote what Microsoft amusingly described as “serendipitous discovery of content” (read: more ads), the decision to develop Twitter and Facebook solely as discrete applications rather than into the core dashboard infrastructure may have been a mistake.

The distinction between an on-dash Facebook and a separate app Facebook may be subtle, but having to go through a blank screen, followed by loading, followed by more loading when you close the app is probably more time consuming than it should be. And definitely not promoting serendipity.

Twitter is definitely quicker, but then you would expect that from what is essentially a glorified RSS feed. The functionality, however, is limited to seeing and updating your own latest update, as well as a very basic list of trending topics and your friends’ updates. Maybe we should be grateful for the basic functionality- especially in the wake of the  Uncharted 2’s Twitter-spam incident.

One glaringly obvious omission is the inability to update either your Facebook or Twitter status by accessing the Guide in-game. You need to go back to the dashboard and open the app.

Another problem is the awkward interface. NXE’s card-based window system, while perfectly sufficient for browsing a list of game downloads, is hardly ideal for displaying Facebook data.

If you’re looking for a bare-bones Facebook client, it does the job, certainly, but is more suited towards an idle occasional browse rather than a serious portal like you might find on your computer browser or even on a smartphone. One nice feature in Facebook is the ability to find which of your Facebook friends are on Xbox Live. Although, being your friends, you probably know if they’re on it already.

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