James Delahunty
15 Jul 2010 1:53
Social networking giant Facebook has hit yet another milestone, this time with its mobile phone users. According to Eric Tseng, head of mobile products at Facebook, the service now has 150 million mobile users, up from 100 million in April 2010. Tseng said Facebook is now focusing on mobile phones as the key platform for Facebook services in the future.
"Mobile is fast becoming our growth lever," Tseng told attendees at the MobileBeat 2010 conference in San Francisco. Overall, Facebook claims to have about 500 million users across all platforms, and over the next six months, it predicts its mobile platforms will catch up with traditional web browser users.
In developing countries, Facebook sees mobile phones as the first route to the Internet for many potential users, and it hopes to attract new users that may never have even turned on a PC in their lives. It is working with Airtel in India on a Facebook mobile-only experience, allowing subscribers to join Facebook by phone. Even without data plans, the company is experimenting offering access to Facebook's text-only service for free.
The company has no immediate plans to puish advertisements through its mobile services since it is still developing them, but said it is straight-forward to do so when the time comes. Tseng said the service is also making improvements to its "social graph", where features of Facebook are extended onto different sites.