At an Android whiteboard meeting yesterday, Facebook announced a new beta program to help strengthen its Android app. By allowing a small amount of users/testers access to new software before its official release, Facebook is hoping to cut down on the possibility of releasing buggy updates to the masses.

There’s nothing particularly special about this program; it’s just like ones we’ve seen before from apps such as Falcon Pro, Nova Launcher, and many others. But what make this one stand out from the others is that Facebook is the first major company to adopt Google’s new beta platform, and it’s paving the way for other large app developers and companies.

A snippet from the press release explaining the introduction of the official Facebook beta program can be seen below:

Beginning today, the Android beta program will give users who opt-in access to the latest versions of Facebook for Android before the general release. Our goals with this program are to expand our pool of testers and gain feedback across a more diverse set of devices. Just by using the app and reporting issues, beta testers will be able to help us improve performance on a wide variety of Android devices we may have otherwise been unable to test at scale.

If you wish to sign up for the beta, simply join the group by clicking here and follow the instructions.

• SourceFacebook