Facebook Phone Rumors Sweep Tech World (Again), Here's Why We're Obsessed
Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly insisted, Facebook is not working on a phone. No way.
"[A]
Facebook phone doesn’t make sense," Zuckerberg said in an interview
last fall. He reiterated the point again this past January: "We're not
going to build a phone."
End of story? Not even close.
Facebook
might not be building a phone -- designing hardware from scratch,
manufacturing handsets and putting them on shelves. But the social
network's invitation to an April 4 press conference, at which Facebook
promises to unveil its "new home on Android," has stoked a new wave of
speculation that the social network is readying a smartphone that will
put Facebook front-and-center.
TechCrunch's
Josh Constine writes that sources suggest Facebook will show off a
modified version of Google's Android operating system that "will have
all sorts of extra Facebook functionality built in."
"Imagine
Facebook’s integration with iOS 6, but on steroids, and built by
Facebook itself. It could have a heavy reliance on Facebook’s native
apps like Messenger, easy social sharing from anywhere on the phone, and
more," writes Constine.
The
Wall Street Journal reports the yet-to-be-announced software "displays
content from users’ Facebook accounts on a smartphone’s home screen–the
first screen visible when they turn on the device." The Facebook-ified
software will debut on HTC phones, but that the social network is
seeking other handset makers as partners, according to the Journal.
9to5Google cites its own anonymous sources in a report speculating that
Facebook and HTC are prepping an ad campaign promoting the social
smartphone. "As a nod to this phone being a much expanded version of the
Facebook application found on iOS and standard Android devices, one of
the tag-lines for the device is 'more than just an app,'" 9to5Google's
Mark Gurman writes.
The
latest chatter comes after more than two years of Facebook phone
rumors, which have covered everything from Facebook's hiring of
ex-iPhone engineers, to the codename for the project ("Buffy," according
to AllThingsD).
So why the obsession with a Facebook phone? And why would Facebook even bother with its own phone?
A
smartphone that offers deeper Facebook integration would be a major
boon to the social network's increasingly critical push to be more
present, more accessible and more frequently used on people's
smartphones. Unlike mobile-first social applications such as Instagram,
Foursquare and Pheed, Facebook launched years before smartphones were de
rigueur and has been left playing catch up.
Facebook's
"new home on Android" could free Facebook from having to hope its users
tap its apps, and instead ensure that people are using Facebook anytime
they're on their phones. Facebook would not only get more of our time
and our attention, but, by serving as the layer between us and our
phones, it could potentially collect more data about what we use, what
we're doing and where we go. It could learn more about who we talk to
and when.
With
its own phone, Facebook would no longer be beholden to Google and
Apple, who have the final say on what happens on Android phones and
iPhones. The social network would have the freedom to launch new
products that up what we share, or to introduce new products that help
advertisers get our attention. All that should make its advertisers --
and shareholders -- quite happy.
Facebook
has already succeeded in making itself part of the connective tissue of
the internet -- its "like" buttons are virtually omnipresent online,
it's convinced developers to build apps to run on Facebook and it
recently announced that over 250 million people play games on its
network, earning developers over $2 billion in total. It's reasonable to
think phones could be next frontier to conquer.
Even as Zuckerberg has denied his company is at work on a phone, he's also acknowledged his ambitions go far beyond an app.
"I
think we're much closer to the beginning than the end in terms of what
we can do with the apps we use today," Zuckerberg said last year.
"They're relatively basic compared to what we think anyone could imagine
they'd want from their Facebook experience on a phone."
Next week, we may finally see what Facebook wants that experience to be.
Courtesy: Huff Post Tech