Microsoft was quick to tout its social networking integration when it launched the Twitter and Facebook apps on the Xbox 360 back in 2009, so it comes as a bit of a surprise that both apps vanished with the recent launch of this year’s fall update.

In a statement to IGN, Microsoft said that it decided to retire both of the apps from Xbox Live in an effort to “streamline” functionality. Fortunately for those of you who are helplessly Facebook/Twitter-addicted, you can still access both sites–you’ll just have to go about it differently.

As Microsoft pointed out to IGN, you can still access both Twitter and Facebook on Xbox 360, but now you’ll have to use the recently-released Internet Explorer app to do so. It requires a few extra steps, but the option does at least still exist.

In case you haven’t been keeping up, the latest Xbox 360 update does add in quite a few new things in addition to Internet Explorer. Although not a major overhaul, the dashboard’s look has been tweaked a bit, and those of you in the U.S. have a new sports destination.

As demonstrated back at E3, Microsoft has also improved the search functionality which ties into Internet Explorer and Microsoft’s own search engine, Bing. To go along with that, Microsoft expanded its Kinect voice search support to 9 new countries: Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Ireland.

Are you disappointed that Microsoft removed the Twitter and Facebook apps from Xbox Live? Did you use either app very much to begin with?

Xbox 360 Loses Twitter, Facebook Apps in Latest Update is a post from: The Inquisitr