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September 27, 2010 Facebook new partner

More details have emerged about Facebook’s plans to launch a smart phone, with reports that the social networking site is working with handset maker INQ Mobile. Bloomberg writes that INQ could launch two Facebook smart phones in Europe in the first half of 2011, followed by the United States later in the year.
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Bloomberg’s sources indicate the phones might be branded AT&T in the U.S. although the carrier is still considering whether to carry the phones. It’s understood they would run on Google’s Android mobile operating system and may not carry Facebook branding.

Mobile is increasingly important to Facebook, with about one in four of the 500 million users already logging into the site while on the move. That number will likely continue to grow as smart phones become more widespread and location check-in services such as Places take off. It’s also important for Facebook from a revenue perspective that mobile game players can buy the Facebook Credits virtual currency with the phones to support their game habit on the go.

I don’t think a Facebook-branded mobile phone makes a whole lot of sense. The company is known for its services not actual gadgets so it would confuse the brand message to launch its own phones. (However, I would have said the same thing about branding phones with the name of the phone network and that practice seems relatively common).

The best scenario for Facebook would be if all smart phones – whether Android, Apple’s iPhone or Blackberry – ran the social networking site smoothly. Since Facebook is unlikely to be allowed input into either the iPhone or Blackberry, it makes sense for it to work with Android developers to ensure that it gets the features it wants.

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September 27, 2010 View Twitter Through Other People’s Eyes

Intrigued by the experience of viewing a friend’s Twitter timeline, angel investor Shervin Pishevar collaborated with 15 year-old iTunes Instant creator Stephen Ou to createTwtroulette.com after a week of work.
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With Twtroulette, users can now visit what industry notables like Mike Arrington, investorBrad Feld, and YouTube’s Hunter Walk see when they open Twitter i.e. what it’s like to follow the people they are following. People can also volunteer their own timelines by adding themselves to the directory. And, like Chatroulette, there’s a random function so one can shuffle through profiles if they’re feeling lucky.

Twitter actually used to have this feature (called “With Friends”) but took it away because relatively few people accessed it. Apparently some users still wanted to have the option to sneak peeks of what other Twitter users see — Pishevar describes his motivation behind the project;

“In my quest to see the New Twitter, I had a friend who had it login into his account, so I could see it. When I was on his account I had this funny feeling; like I had stumbled upon someone’s account who forgot to logout of their Facebook or Twitter account at the Apple Store.

But I was fascinated. I was seeing a view of the world curated by someone else that I couldn’t see anywhere else. In the current world, I only get a sliver of this view via the small percentage of tweets that my friend might share, RT or comment on. By accessing each other’s full timelines we get to peek into each other’s world views.”

Ou’s Twtroulette is one of the first projects launched through Pishevar’s nascent incubator, incubator.co. Pishevar and Ou plan on adding more features that further expand the use case possibilities of Twitter shortly.

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