Microsoft has been very busy of late adding cool new functionality to the Xbox 360. Hot on the heels of the recent Sky Player update comes a whole new host of social media, music and video features for the console.

The latest update gives users with an Xbox Live Gold Membership access to Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm, as well as Zune on demand videos and movies.

As far as I know, this makes the Xbox 360 unique amongst gaming consoles, with a breadth of features not seen on any other machine. So, let's dive in and discover the cool and not so cool points about the new update. The devil is, as always with software, in the detail..

Microsoft has chosen the Twitter micro blogging service as part of the new Xbox social networking features, not Bebo, MySpace or Windows Live. This is probably because of Twitter's exponential growth over the last year, which has seen it expand from a niche messaging website into a full online behemoth. It must be every .com startup's dream to launch online and end up on people's TVs in their front room. Quite how the Xbox version will fit in with Twitter's famously elusive business model is yet to be seen. Maybe it will become a paid for add on, who knows.

The Twitter application is very cool, with a funky interface. You can view trending topics, search, reply, retweet, favourite a tweet, direct message, view your @replys and DMs, view your follower and following lists, follow and unfollow users and view profiles. Obviously, as the Xbox 360 has no web browser, you can't click on any hyperlinks in a tweet. You can't click on any twitter usernames or hashtags in a tweet either, or manually go to a profile by typing in a username, which is a shame. No twitter lists, but that's a relatively new feature anyway. Your Twitter timeline updates automatically and there is an option to manually refresh it as well. Unfortunately, there's no in-game tweeting. There's no running total of characters left when composing a tweet either, which can be confusing.

The Xbox Twitter client shows up as "from Xbox LIVE" on your tweets. Check out how many people are tweeting from their Xbox with my Twitter client popularity tracker.

Overall the Twitter interface works very well. It's usable, if not as fully featured as twitter.com or a dedicated Twitter client, but that's to be expected.

The Facebook application, unlike Twitter, requires a small download, which completes quickly. After logging in you are asked if you want to share your Xbox gamertag with your Facebook friends and whether you want to enable auto-sign in.

Facebook is really very impressive and great fun on the Xbox. The home screen cycles through the latest updates in your news feed and there are tabs for friends, photos and profile. As well as adding your own status updates you can comment or like your friends' updates. There is a lot of integration between Facebook and Xbox Live, so you can see if your Facebook friends are on Xbox Live and visa versa. However, there's no way to add a new friend, watch a video or upload a photo.

Where Facebook on Xbox really excels is when viewing pictures. Being able to watch a slideshow of your family and friends' photos on your TV and view and add comments is a great feature.

If you haven't heard of it before, last.fm is a free online music streaming service that creates virtual radio stations based on your musical tastes. Like Facebook, last.fm on Xbox involves a small download. Once you login you have options to enable auto-sign in, artist photos and scrobbling. Again, like the other applications, you have to run last.fm on its own, so there's no way to stream music whilst playing a game or browsing the Xbox dashboard. There are short ads, for last.fm itself strangely enough, when a station starts and every few songs and there's no volume control in the last.fm player, which can be annoying.

Last.fm might just be the killer Xbox app. For the price of an Xbox Live Gold Membership you can enjoy unlimited streaming from a vast library of music. All the usual last.fm features are there, such as recommended stations, artist stations, tag stations, etc. I’m not sure what bitrate the music is streamed at, but it sounds fine and I haven't experienced any stuttering at all. Like photos on Facebook, it benefits immensely from being freed from a computer screen and beamed into people's TVs and hi-fi systems. It's like having a huge virtual CD collection, permanently stuck on shuffle.

Zune is probably the least interesting of the new updates. Apart from the instant on demand playback of HD movies, which is impressive in itself, it's really just a rebranding of the old Xbox video and movie marketplace. There are only a few hundred movies, so the choice is limited. At least you can rent movies using Microsoft Points, unlike the recent Sky Player for Xbox update.

So, Xbox users here in the UK are still waiting for a comprehensive online movie downloads service like Netflix, which is only available in the USA.

This update also brings a new 'Music Marketplace', which features music videos and the latest tracks for games such as Lips and Guitar Hero.

Once you have all these online services linked to your Xbox Live gamertag it really makes sense to password protect your Xbox account if you haven't already.

To enjoy all of this in your front room you'll need an Xbox 360 and an Xbox Live Gold Membership. Also, to avoid the frustration of trying to update Twitter and Facebook with the on-screen keyboard, either get an Xbox text messenger kit, or just plug a standard USB keyboard into the console.

Unfortunately, Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm will not be available to younger Xbox users. It's obviously a bit of a potential legal minefield for Microsoft, so they've taken the decision to make Xbox social media available to over 18s only. There will be an update in the future that will allow parental controls to be applied to the social networking features of the Xbox so under 18s can access them.

All in all, it's very impressive. The amount of coding, testing and infrastructure required to launch something like this shouldn't be underestimated. You've got to hand it to Microsoft, they've done a great job. It also demonstrates the power of having a good API for social media websites. This Xbox update could never have happened if Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm hadn't invested large amounts of time and money into building programming interfaces for their online services. For more information, demos and videos about the new Xbox update check out Xbox.com.

Official Xbox Videos

These are the official 'Inside Xbox' guides to the new social media update: