I got into the current round of the Xbox 360 Preview Program and last night my Xbox 360 got the update that adds Twitter, Last.fm, and Facebook support – among other things. All three of these new additions sound really cool when you hear about them but after trying them out I’m a little underwhelmed.

I’m not a real big facebook user but I do use twitter and last.fm pretty regularly.  All three of these additions are an application you have to download and then it shows up in the Dashboard.  I don’t really see myself ever using the facebook application, but the one reason I might is because it  looks like it could be good for expanding your friends list over 100 limit. Since it has a section to show your friends gamercards who are not on your Xbox Live friends list but are facebook friends you can still invite these people to a party or game.

Twitter and last.fm I use regularly on the computer.  Both are pretty nice on the 360, but I wish I could send a twitter message from the Guide button. Right now you have to load up the Twitter application and then you can post a new status update, see the last 50, do a search or see trending topics.  Just the option to send a twit like sending messages or chats from the Guide would make it go from neat little thing I’ll use occasionally to something I wold use all the time.  Even if I had to load the application to view all the responses from my friends the option to send from the Guide at any time would be amazing.

The same is true for last.fm.  It is nice to have it there in the living room when I’m not gaming, but when I’m playing a game it would be nice to use it from the guide like you can listen to music on your hard drive.  I know that would probably cause lag issues for multiplayer games but if they let you use it in single player games it would be nice.  Then it could cut off automatically, similar to how downloads of demos cut off, when you go into a multiplayer game. Like with the Twitter app I don’t really see myself using the Last.fm app that often.

One of the other changes that the new update has is a Music Game store section.  In it you can preview and buy DLC for any of the Xbox 360’s music and rhytem games including Guitar Heroes, Rock Band 2, The Beatles: Rock Band, and Lips.  It is really nice to be able to preview the songs strait from the dashboard without even loading up the game.

The one thing that I find annoying about this update is that it makes the Dashboard more cluttered.  Hopefully they will get some good feedback from the preview and clean it up a little more.  I don’t spend a lot of time in the Dashboard, but now I’m sure I’ll be in it less because it is not as easy to find things.   Overall the update has some nice little additions and hopefully is a preview of some big things in the future.