Research In Motion released a new version of its Facebook for Blackberry mobile application yesterday. The app includes improvements to news feed and photo loading, but doesn’t include support for Facebook’s new Places feature. Reviews of the app have generally been negative, with strong criticism of its new push notification system — when configured improperly, it can cause users to get duplicate notifications or not receive notifications at all.

With a high profile release of the new Places-enabled Facebook for iPhone app on Wednesday, the new Facebook for Blackberry app already seems outdated. RIM has improved some features, though, such as increasing the speed of the photo uploading feature, and updating the photo browser. The app no longer needs to reload your friend list each time you search for a friend. Also useful is that the news feed now has infinite scroll, so users don’t need to click “load more stories” to see more feed content.

Most of the negative reviews on the app’s download site and Twitter have focused on confusion surrounding push notifications. The app’s default settings can conflict with the phone’s overall push settings. Users need to enter the app’s options menu and configure Facebook notifications and email notifications to ensure they don’t receive the same notification multiple times or not at all.

This shaky release won’t help Blackberry in its quest to wrestle market share back from the growing Android and iPhone platforms.