14 DAY TRIAL // Hardly surprising, but Facebook is focusing big time on mobile in 2011. One area where it wants to expand is the app platform which could do with a lot of improvements on the mobile front. Incidently, the company also acquired the stealth startup Rel8tion, which has been working on a mobile advertising service.
"We’re excited to confirm that we recently completed a talent acquisition of Rel8tion, a stealth-mode startup in Seattle. The engineering team will join our growing Seattle office, and we’re looking forward to having them on board," Facebook said in a statement confirming the acquisition.
Facebook plans to add the Rel8tion team to its existing one in its Seattle offices. The focus will be on the mobile space, though it's unclear if the technology developed by the startup will be used in any way.
Facebook CTO Bret Taylor talked about the importance of the mobile space at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco. He says that Facebook will focus mostly on mobile this year, especially on the platform front.
While Facebook apps have helped the social network grow in size and keep people sticking around or coming back more frequently, this hasn't been taken advantage of on mobile devices.
With 200 million of its 600 million users already accessing the site from a mobile device and the number growing fast, there's a lot of interest in building a great mobile experience.
But Facebook's strategy on mobile needs some focus. There are quite a few ways of accessing the site on mobile devices and it can be hard to maintain all platforms. Users can visit the regular site but also the mobile version m.facebook.com.
Smartphone users can also access touch.facebook.com for a customized experience. There is also Facebook Zero, the version that comes with no data costs, offered in partnership with carriers.
There are also apps for all major platforms, iPhone, Android, Blackberry and so on. Facebook plans to tackle part of the problem by focusing on the web apps and using HTML5 as much as possible.
However, the one area that needs the most attention is the Facebook platform. Developers complain that there is still plenty to be done until the mobile platform is at least comparable with what Facebook offers on the desktop.