Facebook, which has over 200 million users, is becoming nearly as widely available on handsets as it is on PCs. Its members cannot get enough of sharing their experiences and profiles with their Facebook “friends.” Social networking is becoming a larger business by the day. A new comScore study shows that one of every five online display ads runs on one of the social networks.
Facebook’s popularity is not lost on Nokia (NOK), the world’s largest handset company which has almost 40% of the global market. It will allow people using its cellphones to post their locations and updates to their accounts directly from their handheld screens.
The deal is a clever one because it marries location technology with social network programs. Facebook becomes a “real-time” application though its marriage with Nokia. The new product will be called Lifecasting. According to MarketWatch, “Consumers, who have long personalized the external appearance of their phones through colorful plastic cases and stickers, increasingly want to customize them from the inside as well.”
Handsets have been used for texting and Intenet access for several years. Putting real-time Facebook applications on phones take the personal communications aspect of the wireless industry to another level. That is good news for carriers including AT&T (T), Sprint (S), and Verizon Wireless (VZ)(VOD). A great deal of the money that they make now is based on data use. Anything that encourages people to operate handsets for more than voice communications brings the industry more revenue.
Facebook has changed the way that people use the Internet. That is now moving to the mobile internet as well.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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