As the industry awaits Facebook’s IPO, Telecoms.com takes a look at what the social networking site going public will mean for the telecoms industry. The social networking site revealed in its documents that it currently has 823m unique users per month, according to its December 2011 figures, and half of that figure – around 430m – are using the site from a mobile device, which is larger than the global Android install base.
Facebook has announced that it will bring the management team from location-based social network Gowalla on board, and will close down the service in the process. Gowalla’s CEO Josh Williams and co-founder Scott Raymond will move from the company’s Texas headquarters to Facebook headquarters in California.
International mobile operator Orange has announced a collaboration with Facebook on a range of sub-€100 handsets described by Facebook’s head of mobile, Henri Moissinac, as featuring “the best set of integrations so far” of any device the social networking firm has co-developed. Orange said consumers who buy the handsets, which are built by Alcatel, will get “unlimited” access to Facebook as part of their data plan.
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To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) put together a blockbuster CASBAA Convention 2011 in Hong Kong in early November. But some of the expected fireworks at the convention were not quite as explosive as many delegates had hoped.
Underlining the growing importance of the African region to internet companies as well as more established telecoms players, telecoms.com caught up with Lior Tal, business development manager of Facebook, who is speaking at the Africa Com conference today and is responsible for putting the social network on the map in the African continent.
Network vendor Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has launched a self-care app for Facebook, allowing operators’ customers to personally manage their fixed and mobile telecom services from their phones.
Canny social network Facebook has tapped into a significant market with a version of its platform that can be embedded on the SIM. What the offering lacks in glossy UI it makes up for by bringing Facebook access to the mass market of low end device users.
Mark Zuckerberg is developing some human traits, it seems. The aloofness of the Facebook founder and CEO, as depicted by Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network, came across as arrogance. His lack of social graces was allied to an awkwardness in front of an audience. Now, having clearly studied Steve Jobs’ legendary keynotes, the 27-year-old is much happier selling his product. With 800m active Facebook users worldwide and a recent valuation of $80bn, that’s as you’d expect. Speaking recently at his company’s fourth F8 conference for developers, it became clear he’s growing up, and so is his site.
The number of mobile text, picture and video messages sent worldwide will surpass 7.5 trillion in 2011, according to research firm Ovum, marking a 12.5 per cent increase on the 6.7 trillion sent last year.
Facebook has taken the wraps off Facebook Messenger, a separate mobile messaging application which has been developed by the same team that developed the Beluga group messaging application (Facebook acquired Beluga in Mar. 2011). Facebook Messenger will compete with BlackBerry Messenger and Apple’s forthcoming iMessage, in that it will provide a messaging-over-IP (MoIP) capability. However, Facebook Messenger will have the edge over both RIM and Apple in that it can provide a cross-platform messaging application, specifically for the iPhone and Android mobile operating systems, and so it will therefore also compete against applications such as WhatsApp and KakaoTalk. Facebook has stated that it is also developing Facebook Messenger for the BlackBerry.
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