“We need to make a tablet version of Facebook. It’s something we’re working on right now.”
That was Facebook CTO Bret Taylor speaking to me yesterday in a sit down following his one-on-one interview on stage at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco.
Now, before you get all excited, note that Taylor is not specifically saying that the social giant will make a native iPad app. Instead, he’s saying that there’s needs to be a better version of the service for tablets in general. Having said that, he didn’t exactly rule out a native iPad app either in our chat.
“Long term we think a lot of apps will be written in HTML5,” Taylor said, echoing some of the thoughts he shared on stage. He also talked about making sure that all of the various channels for Facebook data and interaction that exist today on the web transfer over to all the various platforms that Facebook is on. Again, this is in-line with his statements about focusing on streamlining the product line in 2011.
In terms of tablets specifically, Taylor noted that “we’ve been a little cautious about it” saying that the team who work on projects like that have remained relatively small and somewhat fragmented as they’re working on all different kinds of device experiences (though CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t consider the iPad to be a mobile device).
“The iPad was a casualty of that internally,” Taylor continued sounding as if he’s well aware of the intense desire for a native iPad experience. But in the coming year, resources will be shifting around and more focus will be put on mobile and tablets, Taylor said.
“We just want it to be great,” he said of the tablet experience. When I suggested that the Facebook site itself already runs pretty well on the iPad through Safari, he agreed but added, “We could do more with click-targets. Certain elements are very small.” And that’s one thing that Facebook is working on internally at the moment. And I suspect we may see the result of that work relatively soon.
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for the term...
The Apple iPad, formerly referred to as the Apple Tablet, is a touch-pad tablet computer announced in January 2010, and released in April 2010. It has internet capabilities running on either WiFi or 3G, and offers an optional dock with a full size mechanical keyboard. The 3G is provided by AT&T, but comes unlocked with microsim cards on the GSM network. The 3G does not require a long-term contract. The iPad is a line of tablet...
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