At the Mobile World Congress 2010, Facebook’s Chamath Palihapitiya just finished a 20-minute keynote, outlining the social networking juggernaut’s mobile strategy. We’ll have a video of the full presentation up soon.
There were no major announcements, but Palihapitiya did introduce something interesting that hasn’t been publicly announced yet: Facebook Zero.
When you visit the URL zero.facebook.com using your mobile’s browser, you’ll see a notice that your carrier does not yet support the service – obviously because it was just launched and operators have yet to sign up.
Palihapitiya only touched on it for a couple of seconds, but from what I gathered it’s basically a text-only version of the Facebook service that carriers can offer to their subscribers at no charge. If a user then decides to switch from text-only to multimedia (e.g. view photos from their friends), mobile operators can start charging them for ‘premium’ data service.
This system is apparently called zero-rated pages, and allows operators to use a trimmed down version of a web application as a sort of teaser, driving the adoption of certain mobile services or apps, and more data usage revenue down the line.
Presumably, Facebook will offer Facebook Zero to carriers for free, since it helps them make the social network as ubiquitous on mobile phones as possible.
We have an e-mail in with Facebook PR for more information.
Update: Facebook spokesperson Brandee Barker writes back:
“Zero” is a light-weight version of m.facebook.com that omits data intensive applications like Photos. It will launch in coming weeks and we are discussing it at MWC as an option to make Facebook on the mobile web available to everyone, anywhere and allow operators to encourage more mobile Internet usage.
This service can be pretty useful in low bandwidth network areas. Mobile facebook usage would increase significantly!
Facebook create new ways to enjoy social network ;)
anyone know stats of adoption for facebook lite?
it just show up. now it works fine
kinda like facebook lite mobile?
makes sense for low and mid range phones
how come there were like 20 ipad articles the day it was announced, but when windows phone 7 comes out, techcrunch suppresses it and doesnt write much?
o right because you all own macs and iphones and dont want to write about something superior to what you own
ARG!! When will the carriers realize they are complete failures at packaging and selling content in an elastic and consumer-friendly way (Comes With Music, VCast, Ringtones, etc. etc.).
I’m rather annoyed with FB for playing into this scheme by offering a wholesale product for carriers to up-sell from. What’s the point? Hey carriers: Just let me buy my mobile IP packets from you and keep your f’ing hands away from my content.
We tried this but we got the message which is already mentioned above because carries has not signed yet.
Read new service by You Tube- You Tube disco.
http://www.loudable.com/find-mix-watch-with-you-tube-disco.html
Still spamming the same link as yesterday, even after a warning! I smell a ban…
http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/02/15/windows-phone-7-series-our-take/#comment-1208734
This is going to be a huge win application for Facebook. Now if my carrier would just sign up!
this service will be very useful for me and everyone in the middle east, as we have slow connections.
Makes sense…. “mobile operators can start charging them for ‘premium’ data service.” ah, now that’s where it really starts making sense
hang on, is this basically a way to monetize the mobile version of facebook (or, for that matter, any popular website)?
Why doesn’t TechCrunch have a mobile version?
It isn’t that hard in WP, Just pull in a plugin and you have a mobile version.
It’s pain in the a** to load this heavy site on mobile.
Will I need a data plan to use facebook lite?
This used to be http://m.facebook.com right?
Facebook with no images, games, videos = Twitter.
Should be interesting to see how this plays out.
Seems to add some options and utility – ZERO, not much of a consumer facing brand in terms of the value…
I doubt if anyone in the developed world will use it.
In India and China though this might be a different story
well I can’t wait to try facebook zero then.as this will greatly benefits me using facebook that only need to see texts. I mean the data cost is free right as long as I see texts on it other than picture.
An awesome new facebook feature would be a version of facebook that omts zoo world, farmville, mafia wars and any other annoying noise that facebook ispumping out now, they could call it facebook.com or something
wow it is nice service , quick and fast access make people connect
Free to facebook