Facebook has just introduced its mobile service:
“Facebook was invented to make sharing information with your friends easier and better. Mobile phones were invented for pretty much the same reason. People needed an easier and better way to get in touch with each other, and mobile phones made it happen.
We pondered this for a bit, quickly realized that pondering wasn’t making anything awesome happen, and then started building Facebook Mobile. We’re now happy to report that Facebook Mobile has services available for every Facebook user with a phone.”
Available from the Facebook section called “My Mobile” – only accessible to register users, the service includes three main features:
- Mobile Web to surf a mobile-friendly version of Facebook
- Mobile Texts to send and receive Facebook messages, wall posts and pokes using text messages and search profiles from the phone
- Mobile Uploads to send photos and notes to Facebook
Fred Stutzman – a Ph.D. student in Information Science at UNC and a recognized expert in social networking websites – explained in a recent blog post titled “Thoughts on Mobile Social Networks,” that the first two might not have a great future:
“SN use one (time-wasting) is completely out the window for mobile. It is expensive and annoying to try to browse a social network by text message. And in case two, directories – well, our phones are our directories. As Richard Ling and Bridgitte Yttri showed in their study of youth mobile use, teens clearly use their phones as directories. And what happens when they need a number that isn’t in the directory? Well, they could either waste ten minutes texting with a mobile social network, or just call their friend and ask them to Facebook their friend for them and get the number.”
However, the ability to upload photos to Facebook directly from a mobile phone might make more sense (as long as it’s a one or 2 step process that is – I haven’t tested the service).
And, here is where I see a potential issue for mini (or bigger) crises to develop on campuses in a matter of hours.
Just picture this:
Something really bad happens on your campus, a student takes pictures with his/her cell phones and upload them directly to its phone letting her/his network of friends know about it in a matter of minutes. If it’s really a big story, chances are the photos will end up even more quickly in the hands of the media or other influencers.
You can already do it with video on YouTube, which is probably why some controversial campus videos ended up so quickly on the video sharing website.
It won’t probably long before you can also download YouTube videos to a cell phone as well, so your PR team might think about making sure their cell phones do support this feature when it’s out there… to keep up with the news cycle.
Facebook has had mobile facebook for Cingular only (why?) for a while now, and I’ve seen it on people’s phones. I was disgruntled with the thinned-out version, though I could see the bandwidth savings for the end user. I have had to fumble through the main facebook anytime I want to use it on my VZW smartphone. However, It has still proven capable as a time waster in this capacity. Given the clunky interface at 320×240 pixels, though, it doesn’t get the use that it could if it were better laid out (even more so than the m.facebook).
However, this scenario has happened more than once: I am with a bunch of friends, we all have cell phones, none of us have the number for person X. We are far from a computer and don’t know who else might have this number or screen name or something like that. Perhaps we want to check some facebook profile detail. Whatever the question I say, “wait!” and then I save the day using my EVDO vzw Q. : )
Thanks for sharing your experience, Sam.
Very interesting.