I get a lot of thinking done in the shower. I’ll leave it at that so as not to draw any unwanted mental images, but this morning, I was washing what little hair I’ve got left and had a thought about Facebook. Since my trip to San Diego for the BREW conference (more thoughts on that are forthcoming in another post), I’ve been thinking more and more about widgets and runtimes and such. But my thought this morning: what happens if/when Facebook takes its platform and apps mobile?
Obviously there are plenty of Facebook apps that won’t run on mobile phones, I get that. But check out the post by Dean Bubley I referenced earlier, about Facebook v handset apps. What if Facebook creates some sort of layer or runtime that would let developers offer mobile apps, or mobile versions of their apps, as it’s done with its web platform? (Mobile Scrabulous anyone? :D)
It would face the same hurdles as all the other companies targeting this space with their own widget platforms or web runtimes, but its popularity and reach gives it a tremendous advantage. The Facebook mobile site is already one of the most popular mobile web destinations — and with normobs, not just early adopters and hardcore geeks (and MH readers).
James Whatley wrote a post a few months back about Facebook as a mobile device UI. That might be a bit extreme, but I think we’re going down similar tracks that will see the likes of Facebook — internet giants that focus on social connections — making bigger moves into mobile beyond simple sites offering cut-down versions of their PC web sites.
Anyhow, that’s my shower thought for today. What do you think? An idea best left to sink down the drain, or one that deserves being worked up into a lather?
Well, for starters, I also have some great ideas in the shower, but I have to scold you for the last sentence in this post. I realize it was unavoidable, but really?
Heh, all kidding aside, it’s an interesting thought. I’m a pretty big Facebook mobile user, and I did notice the other day that I wasn’t able to do several things, including use any of my applications, on the mobile site.
However, I would MUCH prefer that Facebook move to an existing runtime, rather than create their own. That’s the last thing we need, another web runtime. I wonder how easy it would be to convert a Facebook app into something that would work on Widsets (Widsets Pets, anyone?), or a regular S60 widget?
I think I know where you’re going and I *think* they are already beginning to do this…
Mippin for instance has a ‘post to facebook’ button at the end of each story. The click/sign-in/post process is all done on-device.
But that’s an outside service going in, what about inside out? Your Scrabulous example?
Well - we’re facebook buddies right?
Go to my profile on http://m.facebook.com and scroll down, scroll down a little more… do you see it?
HONESTY BOX.
3rd party app (if I’m not mistaken) which has been taken mobile…
If this is the kinda stuff you mean, then it’s already happening. The speed of take off however is the developers allowing time/spend to get it off the ground.
And cheers for the ‘extreme’ name-check
S’funny, that post came back to me a few days ago, whilst *I* was in the shower…
Still think it could happen y’know - we just need some joined up thinking behind the scenes as it were…
Thanks for the comments, guys. Ricky, I’m glad to see you read all the way to the end
Interesting point about the honesty box, James. But it would be good to see something a bit more than a text box like that or the Wall app. I’m thinking something much more powerful, akin to the mobile widget platforms and web runtimes (like the S60 one Ricky mentioned).
Thanks for sending me the link to your post, Carlo. We’re currently working on some new projects that should soon see the light of day. Please stay tuned.
In the meantime, Facebook is aggressively hiring for our mobile team in order to execute on this kind of thing better and faster. In particular, we’re looking for a program manager and a product manager. If you know anybody, would really appreciate hear from them: http://www.facebook.com/jobs/
I could see Facebook offering an environment similar to Yahoo to Go where app developers could write to an open API and Facebook would maintain a J2ME application (and handle the massive porting challenge). That said, I don’t think most FB app developers are that well positioned to approach mobile in this fashion.
I think the first step towards including the app developers in mobile is extending the delivery of content from within the app to mobile devices.
We are currently engaged with a number of top app developers to send their content to mobile phones via MMS. The beauty of this approach is that the app developer doesn’t have to worry about creating anything mobile specific as we transcode the content for the target device. From the MMS, we can then take the user (if desired) to a deeper mobile experience (WAP or J2ME/BREW) if appropriate.
Facebook WAP is incredibly successful despite being an entirely ‘pull’ experience. Imagine the growth if we can link app to friend interaction via messaging to the mobile!
The recently launched WidSets Pets would seem a good example and most mobile widget platfroms should be able to integrate relatively straight forwardly
[...] When Will Facebook Take Apps Mobile? by Carlo Longino (Las Vegas, Nevada, USA) [...]
The mobile api (which probably doesn’t do all of what you want): http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Mobile
As mentioned these are various SMS/MMS applications that can be used. There are also other ways to connect your mobile to facebook application. MixSync connects your native contact list etc to your a facebook application http://mixsync.com/services/mixsyncs-sn-sync/