Rumor on the digital street was that Facebook was going to make a "big" mobile platform announcement on Wednesday. Like many others, I tuned in thinking this would be a Facebook-related telephony announcement. Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t this picture look like it hints at a Facebook phone or some sort of Facebook calling application?
But it wasn't a calling application. At the event, Mark Zuckerberg himself dispelled any Facebook-related telephony rumors. Since I sat through almost the entirety of the presentation, I thought I’d share with you some of my thoughts on what was revealed and reflect a bit on how this announcement relates to our industry. Facebook revealed that a whopping 200 million people, or about 40% of its user-base according to Facebook statistics, access their services on mobile devices. That number is a lot bigger than I was expecting. They’ve been hard at work on a single sign on partnership with app developers. Apparently, it’s a huge pain in the ass for a lot of people to login to apps on smart phones. This new single sign on process for mobile devices will work almost identically to how Facebook Connect works in your browser. It’s neat and makes your life a bit more convenient if you’re constantly juggling apps that ask for your email address and password. The next big reveal was Facebook Deals, which—as far as I can tell—is the only incentive to ever ‘check-in’ to locations using the recently released Facebook Places (other than polluting newsfeeds with your whereabouts). Here’s how it works in the updated Facebook App for iPhone: You can see Deals that are running in your vicinity by selecting the option to ‘check-in’, which now sits at the top of your live feed. Places with Deals will have a yellow coupon next to the name. Clicking on those locations will reveal the current promotion that they’re running and if you check-in there, you can collect the reward and win at life.
 |
 |
You can see above that Starbucks is making a donation every time someone checks in at one of its locations. A lot of big brands are getting involved. For example, if you are one of the first 10,000 to check-in at a GAP store location today, you get a free pair of jeans. Deals and Places could be big, but past numbers for location-based services are not amazing. According to Pew Internet, an Internet think tank, only 4% of ‘online adult Americans’ use location based services. This seems like a small number considering how much press services like Foursquare have been getting recently. Techcrunch predicts that it will be a different story after the numbers take into account Facebook, but I’m not completely convinced. Most of my friends are in their early to mid 20s, on Facebook 24/7, tech-savvy and equipped with smart-phones, and none of them have ‘checked-in’ quite yet. The final bit of Facebook news was that they are working hard to make Facebook as an experience device and platform agnostic. Here comes my tie in to IP communications: Facebook is taking a step towards providing a uniform experience, independent of platform/device. Now this is something with which we're familiar.
Just as Facebook is bringing their Android experience up to speed, those of us here at OnSIP want to make sure that you can fully access our services from any SIP device.
It seems like Facebook is pretty intent on this philosophy. When asked about an iPad app, their response implied that they were going to wait for more tablets to catch up before delving into it.