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Zuckerberg: No Facebook Phone, Focus is on Facebook’s Mobile Platform

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Any hope for a Facebook phone was squelched early on during Mark Zuckerberg’s address at today’s Facebook Mobile event. He was clear and succinct: there will be no Facebook phone. And his reasoning isn’t much different than anyone who already questioned how a Facebook phone would fit into the mobile space: why focus on a single platform when Facebook could just as easily focus on every platform with the implementation of amobile strategy comprised of Facebook services made available through applications spanning beyond their own mobile offerings.

One of the biggest announcements with their new mobile platform is a single sign-on functionality. Once you are signed into your Facebook account on your handset, applications that use Facebook APIs won’t ask for secondary log-ins. This was demonstrated using Groupon. With the click of a log-in button Facebook access is granted. Only a few lines of code are necessary to add this ability.

Facebook is also offering up their location APIs and a new deals platform that will allow users to see deals in their area based on proximity. It seems like their new mobile ventures are taking serious strides into the world of check-in social services such as foursquare.

Many apps using Facebook’s new single sign-on are on the way including Zynga, Groupon, Loopt, SCVNGR, Yelp, Flixster, and Booyah, and a bunch should be updated in the Android Market by the end of the day. A new Facebook SDK for Android will be made available shortly.

Kevin Krause
Pretty soon you'll know a lot about Kevin because his biography will actually be filled in!

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19 Comments

  1. facebook for android update just went live

  2. Got the update !!!!!!!!!!!

  3. Who the hell really wants a facebook phone??? I don’t trust Facebook with my info so I use an alias on Facebook and fake info like fake birthdays, spam email address, etc.

    There’s no way I see how a Facebook phone would be desirable than a stock Android phone.

  4. So this entire thing was about how to tie more sites and personal info into facebook. They even brought out the zynga guy. Not a ringing endorsement.

  5. This was beyond underwhelming…but the update for the app is out now so im giving it a spin

  6. It’s faster that’s for sure…amd notifications don’t take you out the app…still no fucking chat so I’m still usong Go! Chat….I’m on a HTC hero btw…4 ****

  7. Waste of my time…. i can’t believe i sat through 20 min before i closed the window

  8. Wow, Fred, paranoid much?

  9. This was all pretty lack luster.

  10. I want a facebook phone like I want a Garmin phone with Blur.

  11. Am I the only one not on Facebook? Like I could care less. The local paper had a perfectly good comment system but they dropped it and now you can only post comments if you are on Facebook. March along sheeple.

  12. Ooooh…how about an AOL/Garmin/Facebook phone with Blur & Touchwiz?

  13. Phoenix – Actually, there’s a small movement afoot from people trying to untangle themselves from Facebook and they’re finding it quite a difficult process.

  14. I can’t even get the app to load on my Captivate. :(

  15. I tried deactivating my fb for a month and only lasted 3 days…its hard

  16. Best quote of the day from Mark Zuckerberg: “iPad is not mobile” hence no Facebook App for iPad. Classic!

  17. SERIOUSLY!?!? Again, another facebook update and still no chat? How about Mark Zuckerburg stops adding shit like Facebook places, etc. and focus on getting the basic pieces in the app!

  18. Phoenix – you’re obviously a moron.

  19. I’m not on fb too, although I’ve been (and am) tempted to jump on the bandwagon. Let’s see how long I’ll last. Sometime in the future I wanna be one of those hippy-sagely guys who’s gonna say with a booze induced drawl “only the coolest people are not on it”.

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