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