Facebook, Flipboard apps coming to Windows 8

At Microsoft's developers conference, Build, the company announced that it will be bringing apps for Facebook and Flipboard to its Windows 8 OS.

At Microsoft's Build, which runs June 26-28 in San Francisco, the company revealed that the Windows App Store now has close to 10,000 apps, with this number expected to rise to in excess of 175,000 by January 2014.

Microsoft confirmed that among these new apps will be versions of Facebook and the social network aggregation app Flipboard for Windows 8.

Though few details are known about the Windows 8 app versions of these services, the addition of Flipboard and Facebook would enable users to access their social media accounts without the need to launch a browser; instead Facebook, for example, will be able to be accessed directly from the start screen.

At Build, both the Facebook and Flipboard apps were demonstrated on an 8-inch Acer device that running the Windows 8.1 update.

Flipboard also released a statement on June 26, stating that a Windows 8 app version will be available "later in the year."

One of the biggest items to come out of Build was the demonstration of Microsoft's updated Windows 8 OS, Windows 8.1, which is due to be released to the general public later in 2013.

Watch an eight-second preview of Flipboard on Windows 8 at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature&v=-j5el0vxCN8

For more information on Build see: http://www.buildwindows.com/