Facebook to be a Mobile Company in 1-2 Years

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Facebook is growing to be the most popular websites around. In fact, in some regions, they’re already the #1 website, even surpassing Google by traffic. But considering the ubiquity of mobile devices, Facebook thinks it’s high time to focus on mobile access rather than just the web.

At the recently-concluded GigaOM Mobilize 2011 conference, Facebook’s Head of Mobile Products Erick Tseng says the company is increasingly becoming more of a mobile company than a company that develops applications for the web. Tseng notes that a big number of users worldwide are accessing Facebook on their mobile devices, like smartphones and even tablets. But in some places, people know Facebook for its mobile apps rather than web.

We will soon become a company where more than half of all our users will be mobile users. We’re getting to the point now where the countries we’re going into … don’t have many computers at all.

To date, almost half of Facebook’s users access the service through mobile devices. 350 million out of the 800 million active users use smartphones, tablets and even feature-phones with mobile web access. Facebook realizes that not all markets have easy access to platforms like Android and iOS, and so it acquired app maker Snaptu, which develops a social networking platform for feature phone platforms Symbian Series 40 and the like.

However, Tseng says Facebook wants to go beyond mobile apps. An even more ambitious goal that Facebook is working on is for these applications to be embedded in next-generation smartphones and mobile phones. “Where we want to evolve is a place where you don’t have to go into [a Facebook application] to make it social … it should be pervasive throughout.” This is perhaps exemplified by third-party attempts to integrate Facebook into the mobile phone, such as the HTC Chacha, which offers one-click access to sharing information on the social network.

But when queried about Facebook’s plans for a native app for the iPad, Tseng says Facebook has no updates at this point. He says the iPad is a fantastic device, but that users will have to resort to third-party applications. “If you want to get the Facebook fix, there are a number of apps that weren’t developed by us,” he says. So much for going mobile?