The world’s largest social network platform, Facebook of course, recently began working with HTC to create the first ever real “Facebook Phone” according to some un confirmed reports that were recently discussed on Mashable.com. Although many providers before have made phones that integrate with Facebook such as the iPhone and Android devices which have a basic FB app among some of FB’s other new messenger apps, there has never been a super “deep” integration before. Facebook allows users to keep track of their friends locations, photos, status, videos, and much more and perhaps a more integrated system would allow people to introduce more content into their Facebook system and become even more “tuned in” what is going on around them and with their phones.
Google’s Android platform for example has allowed Google to expose many of its services such as Maps, Search, Web Browsing, Mail, and more in a fashion that increased usage significantly. The search provider has been able to get people to use these services on mobile at an increasing rate which helps secure their loyalty for future usage on desktop and other computing devices that may serve Google Ads or other items that help make Google money. This has been a great success for Google as now their phone is used by even more people than iPhones and is growing at a fast rate due to the high availability of their devices at low costs and many distribution points.
Facebook’s move is an interesting one but will likely only have limited success to dedicated fans of Facebook that are willing to give up the power of an iPhone or mainly Google Android device for less Google perhaps and more Facebook.