Facebook phone 'coming next year' from HTC

HTC's Salsa phone was the first mobile to feature a branded Facebook button; now the company is said to be working on deeper integration 

The social network has previously denied that it is working on a phone but has never ruled out using a third-party to manufacture a device that has Facebook built-in at every level.

Reports from AllThingsD now suggest that a device, codenamed ‘Buffy’, will run on a revised version of Google Android, mirroring the way that Amazon has built the Kindle Fire tablet computer.

Facebook is reported to have “tweaked [Android] heavily to deeply integrate its services, as well as to support HTML5 as a platform for applications, according to sources familiar with the project”.

Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor is said to be leading the project, which will build on the previous ‘Facebook phones’ that have launched with a dedicated button for access to the social network. The HTC Salsa and ChaCha are currently also joined by devices such as those made by INQ, which emphasise deep Facebook integration. Building their own phone, however, would be an unprecedented step into the challenging, low margin mobile market, confirming long-runnng rumours.

The move is seen as attractive, however, as more people in the developing world gain their first experience of the web via their mobile phone. If it is to continue growing, Facebook will need to make sure it has solid access to those markets as well as to existing ones in the developed world. Google is increasingly emphasising the Google+ rival social network, while Apple and Amazon’s rival offerings risk getting a foothold in the lucrative mobile payments market that Facebook is seeking to access via its ‘Facebook Credits’ scheme.

Facebook currently has more than 350 million active mobile users and is among the most supportive app in app stores for all operating systems. In a statement the company said “Our mobile strategy is simple: We think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social. We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.”

AllThingsD reports that the phone could be 18 months away, and that Samsung, who has just released Google’s flagship model, the Galaxy Nexus, was also considered.

HTC declined to comment.

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Facebook 'headhunts Apple iPhone engineers' to build smartphone

The engineers are part of a team working on Facebook’s third attempt to build a smartphone, for release by next year, The New York Times said, citing unnamed multiple sources.

The first attempt, in 2010, was scrapped when the firm realised the difficulty it would face turning itself from a software developer into a hardware maker. Another effort, in cooperation with the Taiwanese smartphone firm HTC and codenamed “Buffy”, is still under development.

With its new, hand-picked smartphone engineers, Facebook is now reportedly going “deeper into the process, by expanding the group working on Buffy, and exploring other smartphone projects too, creating a team of seasoned hardware engineers who have built the devices before”.

The migration of web users to smartphones and tablets was named in Facebook’sn regulatory filings for its recent flotation as one of the main threats facing it as a business. It currently makes no meaningful revenue from mobile app users, who are growing in number more rapidly than traditional website users.

Meanwhile the smartphone market remains dominated by Apple, which has integrated Twitter into iOS, and devices running Android, a mobile operating system created by Google, Facebook’s main advertising rival on the web.

“Mark [Zuckerberg] is worried that if he doesn’t create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms,” a Facebook employee told the New York Times.

The firm is reportedly aiming to keep its latest smartphone effort as secret as possible, by headhunting individuals rather than advertising vacancies on the team. Facebook has seemingly learned from its 2010 experience and is focused on recruiting hardware specialists.

A Facebook spokesman said: “We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers.”

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'Facebook phone' confirmed by HTC: ChaCha and Salsa officially unveiled

The first phones to feature a dedicated Facebook button have been confirmed by mobile maker HTC. Much-rumoured, ChaCha and Salsa will allow instant access to the popular social network via the button. Although not official ‘Facebook phones’, HTC and Facebook both said they had cooperated closely on the devices. Salsa is a touchscreen phone while ChaCha will also feature a keyboard.

Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, said that “we wanted to create the ultimate socially connected phones with mass market appeal”, while Henri Moissinac, Facebook’s Head of Mobile Business, said “We have worked closely with HTC for several years on bringing Facebook to their devices and HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa are the next stage.”

The Facebook button will be ‘context aware’, offering different function depending on what the user is doing. It will allow instant sharing of photographs or music from the phone. Status updates and information will also be displayed if the phone identifies a caller as a user’s Facebook friend.

HTC hopes the integration of Facebook will appeal to a generation of new consumers who use the site more than email and run their social calendars through Facebook’s events functions.

The company also announced a 7” tablet, the Flyer, that features an Apple-style ‘unibody’ Aluminium case. It also includes a pen which, for instance, can integrate recording sound with taking notes by hand so that lectures can be synchronised with notes. A video download service, integration with Skype and cloud-gaming OnLive and an enhanced version of HTC’s sense interface were also unveiled, along with updates to the Wildfire and Desire models.

All the products will be available in the UK in the second quarter of 2011. The Flyer will initially be sold running Gingerbread but will be upgraded to Google's tablet-specific operating system Honeycomb after it is released.

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Facebook 'working on phone with HTC'

Facebook, which urgently needs to find a way to make money from its growing number of mobile phone visitors, has already hired former Apple employees who are believed to be working with HTC on the new project.

The news comes as Facebook is due to announce its first financial results since its troubled flotation on the US stock market. Shares traded in the company on the German stock exchange fell €1.28 to €22.50 in anticipation today, as Facebook gaming firm Zynga announced disappointing results of its own. Facebook shares in New York are down by approximately a quarter compared to its May 17 flotation price.

The social network is widely expected to announce it now has more than a billion users during its earnings call, but more than half of them access the site via mobile, and founder Mark Zuckerberg has identified the transition to mobile usage as his “greatest challenge”. None of the $3.15 billion in advertising sales last year came from advertising on phones.

Building its own device could allow the site to collect revenue from its existing advertisers more effectively by making sure their commercial content was distributed throughout the phone’s different functions.

HTC has already produced the first phones to feature a dedicated Facebook button, and is looking for a way to differentiate its products from those of rival manufacturer Samsung. Its flagship One X device has been dogged by bans on US sales following a patent dispute with Apple. Shares in HTC have dropped 43 per cent this year after it reported three consecutive quarters of profit decline.

Facebook already makes a series of applications for online chat and photography, and it recently purchased picture-enhancement app Instagram for $1 billion. Combining these apps with existing calendar functions mean the site already has the major components of a mobile phone operating system, and it could follow Amazon’s model and adapt Google’s Android OS.

Facebook has also recently introduced the ‘App Centre’, which it could see as a rival to Apple’s App Store or Google Android’s Play marketplace. Last year, Facebook also bought Push Pop Press, a digital publishing software maker co-founded by Apple alumni Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris, two designers who helped build the look and feel of the iPhone and iPad software.

In a statement Facebook said it did not comment on rumour and speculation, but added “Our mobile strategy is simple: We think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social. We’re working across the entire mobile industry to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.”

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How Facebook could help swing the US election

How Facebook could help swing the US election - science-in-society - 12 September 2012 - New Scientist@import "/css/gridmain.css"; @import "/css/article.css";@import "/css/comlist.css";@import "/data/images/ns/haas/haas.css";/* specific to this article view */#maincol {border-top:solid #A7A7A7 1px; padding-top:15px;}/* Basic commenting CSS*/.combx {margin:10px 0 0 0;padding:10px 20px 10px 10px;}#compnl {border-top:solid #A7A7A7 1px;}/* comment styles for article page only *//* form styles */#comform {margin:20px 50px 20px 10px;}#comform label{width: 90px;text-align: right;}#comform div.userhelp {margin:0 0 2px 115px;}#comform input.textinput, #comform textarea {width:300px;}#comform div.floatclear, #comformlogin div.floatclear {margin-bottom:10px;}#comform input#comcancel{margin:0 10px 0 0;}#comform input#compreview{margin:0 10px 0 0;}#comform textarea {height:95px;}#comformlogin {margin:20px 100px 20px 100px;}#comformlogin label{width: 120px;}#comformlogin input.textinput {width:150px;}#snv_science-in-society a {background: url('/img/bg/snv_science-in-society.jpg') no-repeat; color:#fff;}/* article social media */#sharebtns {width:440px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:20px; padding:15px 0 15px 10px; background:#F2F2F2;}#sharebtns div.floatleft {margin-right:10px;}#sharebtns .stumble {margin-top:1px;}.grpTools img {margin-right:8px; margin-top:9px;}#fblike {margin-top:41px;} Science in Society    Log in

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How Facebook could help swing the US election18:00 12 September 2012 byJim GilesFor similar stories, visit theUS national issuesTopic Guide Could Facebook help swing this year's US presidential election? That's the possibility raised by a study showing that a simple message on the social network could help boost turnout of Facebook users by 2.2 per cent. With the right targeting of voters in marginal seats, that might be enough to swing an election.

Political parties everywhere work hard to get their supporters to the polls. Traditional methods, such as house visits, can increase turnout by around 10 per cent but are time consuming and expensive. Online campaigns, such as emails to supporters, are much cheaper but thought to have limited impact. The new study suggests that, done right, social media can be both cheap and effective.

On 2 November 2010, the day of the Congressional elections, more than 60 million Facebook users in the US saw a pro-voting message at the top of their Facebook page, placed there by a team at the University of California, San Diego. It included an "I voted" button, and the profile pictures of friends who had already clicked it.

Social component The team compared the voting records of people who saw the message with those who did not. Just being exposed to the message persuaded an additional 0.4 per cent of users to vote.

The social component was more powerful still: users were 1.8 per cent more likely to vote if a close friend had also seen the message. The total impact on turnout is greater than the margin of victory in the national vote in presidential elections in 2000, 1976 and 1968.

Both President Barack Obama and his rival Mitt Romney invest heavily in social media, and will be licking their lips at such a cheap way of gaining extra voters.

Both campaign teams can be expected to modify their efforts to capitalise on this kind of social contagion. "If I was running one of the campaigns I'd pay close attention," says James Fowler, one of the authors if the study, which appeared in Nature.

Time will tell That could mean that Facebook and other social media lead to a bump in turnout in November, but with both sides alert to the potential their efforts will not necessarily produce an advantage for either side.

A similar effect is sometimes seen in television advertising, where campaigns can spend enormous amounts and, in the absence of a big financial advantage on either side, end up in a dead heat.

Fowler's finding "illustrates the possibility of field experiments of mind-blowing scale", says David Lazer, a social scientist at Northeastern University in Boston. But he adds a note of caution: "Social media use is changing so much that it is unclear whether a similar intervention would have similar effects four years from now."

Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature11421

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