Mobile boss Henri Moissinac on what the social network did next.
Forget those Facebook Phone rumours. If Facebook really wanted to disrupt the mobile industry, it would launch its own mobile advertising platform.
A reach of 200 million people from day one, and demographic/location data that would have brands dribbling. So why not do it? ME asked Facebook's head of mobile Henri Moissinac, who was in London today for a round of press interviews.
"Right now we are focused on the web, where we believe we can provide game-changing ad services," he says.
"Every time we have a new engineer working on monetisation, it's more efficient to put them on web advertising. Mobile ads? What should the experience? Should we replicate what other people have done on mobile? Clone what we do on the web? These are all open questions."
Those questions will surely be answered one day, but for now Facebook remains focused on building usage and engagement with its three-pronged mobile offering: smartphones (apps and handset/OS integrations); feature phones; and APIs for third-party developers.
Facebook's 200 million monthly active mobile users - a milestone announced last night - has tripled in the last year.
Moissinac says that most usage is in the obvious developed countries - UK, US, Canada and France for example - but that emerging markets like Indonesia, Kenya and South Africa are also seeing sharp growth in mobile usage of Facebook.
"In some of these countries, more than 60% of our users are web-and-mobile over the month," he says. "In the UK, which is a very strong mobile market for us, the penetration of web-and-mobile is around 40%."
He uses the term 'web-and-mobile' because there is not a separation between people using the social network on PCs and on mobile phones - certainly in the developed markets, mobile users are also web users.
Facebook Places was a big part of last night's event, rolling out from iPhone to Android, and (in the US) getting a new Deals element for local businesses to provide offers and discounts to people checking in.
What has Facebook learned from Facebook Places so far, now that it's been available in the US and other markets for a while?
"It's way too early," says Moissinac, declining to give any metrics or hunches about usage of Facebook's social location feature. "In the first few weeks, it is about optimisation and corrections. When we have the flaws fixed, then we can start learning. We're still in fix the car mode!"
It seems the UK won't be seeing Facebook Deals rolled out this side of Christmas, though.
"Places went live in the UK six weeks after we launched in the US, but it will take longer for this [Deals]," he says. "Christmas is coming up, and there are more elements to the puzzle."
Moissinac says that Facebook Places and its new Deals feature are all about creating more engagement between local businesses and consumers, and help drive more foot traffic to the businesses and venues as a result.
Lots of big retailers and restaurant chains are on board for the US launch, but Moissinac says Deals will not be restricted to the big boys.
"We want it as much as possible to be self-service," he says. "The natural selection is who is interested and who is not. We want to make it possible for anybody to use it: not just businesses, but charities, soccer clubs..."
The launch of Deals seems to say something important about Facebook's view on social location: it has opted to go down the offers and discounts route, rather than adopt the more gamified approach seen in Foursquare's points and mayorships, and more overtly in MyTown's Monopoly-esque dynamic.
Moissinac thinks this should not come as a surprise. "If you step back to see how the platform has been successful with social games, we are not a games company," he says. "We are a social graph company, and we apply social graphs to games."
In other words, Facebook sees Places as an ideal platform for games made by other people - companies like MyTown's developer Booyah - rather than making Facebook Places itself a game.
The company is also seeing strong interest in Places from brands and entertainment companies, looking to create innovative social location marketing campaigns.
"A lot of people are passionate about Facebook in corporations, media companies and games companies, but how to leverage something like Places is still a bit new," he says.
"We will see some game-changing ideas in location services, once hundreds of milions of people are doing check-ins. We'll see the new scenarios: someone will create the FarmVille of location services, but that doesn't come straight away."
Advertisement
