By Adam. E. John

“Today, its finally here,” writes Leon Dubinsky, an engineer with the company,  on the Facebook Blog. The words are especially appropriate, as the app has been a long time coming, and there has been considerable speculation as to how the app will walk and talk and pinch and squeeze. You can download the app from here.  The app is of course also available here in the Apple store. Facebook has also updated its iPhone app and m.facebook.com, writes Dubinsky. Needless to say, this a fresh app, as opposed to say Facebook’s iPhone app merely running on the iPad.

“And the iPad app is live! Congratulations to the talented team at Facebook that got this out the door. It’s great to see it in the wild!” blogs Jeff Verkoeyen, Facebook’s former lead engineer responsible for the iPad app, who left the company to work for Google, apparently frustrated over the delay in the launch (though Verkoeyen refutes such a claim on his personal blog).

This may feel like an iPad inside an iPad. You can chat with Facebook friends using the app, or play games and use apps in full-screen mode. You can also watch high-res videos inline, record HD video and stream to Airplay devices.

The photos are bigger, better and high-res, not to mention easier to flip through like a real album.

You can tap to send messages, using a drop-down menu.

Of course, the app lets you do things you can not do with the Web version of Facebook, multi-touch gestures like the pinch and squeeze for one. Some of the features may already feel familiar if you are using the Android version of the app. Speaking of which, the Facebook Android app  has a rating of 3.6 out of 5 from 1,746,378 users, and the Facebook for iPhone has a rating of 4 out of 5 from 1,818,535 users, so the iPad ride might just be a little bumpy for a while.

Adam E. John is consulting editor with techtaffy.com. He can be reached at [email protected].