Research In Motion (RIM) has announced the first beta release for the next major version of Facebook for BlackBerry. It comes with some more attractive features.

# Facebook Chat lets you see which of your Facebook friends are online and start a Chat conversation from within Facebook app or within unified mailbox on your BB. On Facebook for BlackBerry, as long as your status is set to online, you still receive notifications even if you aren’t using Facebook app.
# Improved News Feed interactions enable you to scroll through News Feed without accidentally clicking “Like” you can simply click “More” button (+) to interact with friends’ posts. Enhanced publisher functionality allows you post photos to your Wall, add an update, or check in to a Facebook Place from News Feed.
# New Navigation Control
# Notifications Bar borrowed from BlackBerry 6 OS’ “Today View” offers an easy way to access Facebook Notifications, Messages, Friend Requests and Chats from anywhere in the Facebook app.

# External Notifications in BlackBerry’s header lets you see when you’ve received a new email message or BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) message without having to leave the Facebook app.
# New Profile UI and Profile Information Viewing now provides Wall, Info, and Photo tabs for an even better browsing experience. New to v2.0 is the ability to view key information on Profiles and Pages, such as contact info, basic info like birthdays, hometown and relationship status, and likes and interests.

Facebook for BlackBerry smarthphone app is available through BlackBerry Beta Zone.