Smartphone running 'Facebook OS' said to debut this week Facebook has sent out invitations to an event at its Menlo Park headquarters this week that many believe will see the launch of a new, Facebook-branded smartphone – and an Amazon phone may not be far behind. Facebook's invites themselves were fairly cryptic. "Come See Our New Home on Android" was all they said, along with the …
Why? There are enough self-important Facebook users out there who think the unimportant, boring, uninteresting minutiae of their sad lives must be shared with the world. To them the pinnacle of smartphones would be a Facebook phone, in their minds this phone gives them affirmation, that they are important to the rest the Universe. Their circle of friends will of course coo and fawn over them and aspire and covet such a phone, thus increasing their own self-importance.
An Amazon phone on the other hand would probably be cheap to buy, cheap to run, cheap to replace Nd come with free delivery on all purchases. Not something you'd want to get out at the pub though.
FB is trying hard to remain relevant as more and more users tyre of the worlds largest self-enrolling marketing pool IMO.
I can't say I blame (FB) them for trying to further entrench themselves in peoples lives, as its a way to remain relevant.. I'm sure there will be some fools...err followers that will bite, but as a non-Fbooker, I pass for the same reason I'll never own an IDevice. I prefer to use as open a system as I can. Google does offer lots of services, but I get to opt out any I wish and I still prefer making up my own mind, as opposed to letting some company tell me how its going to be.
for example: I'm able to stream all my music from my homeserver without the need to have any company (apple/google) host/control my content. Subsonic lets you stream music (even movies) without commercials/ads for a single one time donation (fee) and no need to upload any content like Google Play.
There are alternative solutions out there, if you're willing to look.
Best wishes,
Gives a whole new meaning to "Insta(nt)Gram"...
FaceGram? InstaBook, anyone?
A new world of "telegram" activity. Imagine the looks on the faces of Bell, Edison, and others from way back when if they could be reanimated to face today's world. Imagine now rich they'd be if they were alive to reap patents that might have flowed -- assuming US Patent laws were different.
FB will probably have a real-time, live-streaming camera server running with the messenger/chat feature embedded, enabling almost-live global image-feeding. Now, the news papers might be able to make money getting right-of-first-refusal access to fb users' photos. Wouldn't be too bad a deal as long as the photo authors get nice compensation, and maybe royalties, too, if the papers want to own the photo and all rights to the photo.
The papers probably won't even have to increase staff too much, either, since FB and other companies have object recognition, meaning news papers and even intel agencies might want to remote-command snapping of locales by random cameras since they can access or tease out the location of the phone. If so, expect some countries to REALLY clamp down on FB if they are paranoid...
While most sane people agree that monopolies are a bad thing, fragmentation by forking cannot be good for the market. Testing apps for a smartphones/tablets will be so involved that developers will be forced out of the market or end up prducing software that only mostly works some of the time.
"developers will be forced out of the market or end up prducing software that only mostly works some of the time."
My god yes. Isn't it just so wonderful that the PC has been so unified for the past 30-odd years?
As for a Facebook phone... unfortunately no developers will get another rating or review from me specifically because of the Plus requirement to do so now. If I wanted a Facebook account, I'd get a Facebook account.
Maybe the phone will be useful to some people, but.. no thanks.
This post has been deleted by its author
> fragmentation by forking cannot be good for the market.
It is called variety and choice. Choice is good for the consumers, which is why Android leads the market.
One OS vendor wants their OS to be identical from every OEM. That limits choice. That is not good for the market, as shown by the market share that it has.
> Testing apps for a smartphones/tablets will be so involved that developers will be forced out of the market or end up prducing software that only mostly works some of the time.
What complete nonsense. Most apps will run on any fork, it is only the Google branded stuff that gets removed. Developers may choose to only support vanilla Android, or may choose to use Google specific stuff, such as maps, and thus not run on facebook, or could use Facebook specific stuff and thus only be in the Facebook app store. It is called _choice_. Or they could do both.
There is a large enough base of users, and a large enough base of apps to not worry the developers or the users.
Using your argument then 'forking' Windows into Starter, Home, Professional, Ultimate, Server, Enterprise, Home Server, etc "cannot be good for the market" and "developers will be forced out".
@Richard Plinston. I have a business developing across both iOS and Android. I can tell you for sure you're right that with a large enough market developers won't go away. But you couldn't be more wrong in your comparison of Android to Windows and trivialising the extent of the problem. We're allocating our test budget for Android has to be many multiples the budget for iOS. The problem is every small difference makes a very big difference to the number of tests that have to be run - you haven't said this, but it's often said by others that the various flavours of Android are "almost the same." Well that phrase hides a huge number of cases and headaches when it comes to testing.
Depends on what they remove or replace.
Sony Ericsson manage to infest their devices with FaceBook integration and multiple FB apps, multiple Sony owned app stores, customise many default apps and reskin the UI. But they remove nothing Google cares about - maps is still there, the Play Store is still preinstalled and so on.
Nokia rejected Android because G wouldn't let them *replace* Google Maps. At the time Orange had no problems shipping devices with their own maps app prominently displayed along with the full G package - crucially including G Maps.
It's so easy to replace or modify key parts of the system you don't even need to fork to heavily customise Android. That said I expect FB will fork to ensure they capture as much profit as possible. With every app store containing the same apps it wont be too hard populating a shiny new FB version and they won't even need to pressure devs to include FB support since every damn app I see seems infected already.
"Why will Google let HTC do this ?"
Because they don't have any choice. HTC have signed up with the Android handset alliance. Not Facebook. Google can stop HTC Forking Android if they wish to remain a member if the Alliance. But they can't, through the alliance, stop HTC being a hardware supplier to Facebook because that would get them a fast track referral to the FTC for anti-competitive practice. Threatening HTC with losing membership of the Alliance for supplying a competitor would be as clear a breach of the law as if they were to threaten the same if a member were to produce Windows or Tizen phones.
What is more interesting to me is that it's now clear that Google have lost control of the Android brand (it can be and is often used without referral to Google's legal dept), and that despite this loss of control (or perhaps because of it) most suppliers are moving away from referring to Android, what does Facebook's referral to Android mean in terms if the extent of collaboration between Facebook and Google? I guess we will find out soon.
Who wants to bet sharing is not only really easy when you want to but almost impossible to avoid when you don't?
Now in some respects there's not a lot of difference between Facebook and Google they both want to own us much of your data as possible. However Google want to sell an anonomised version to advertisers Facebook want to do that but also plaster it all over your wall as well.
Can see there being a one click to post to wall icon which is very easily pressed when using your phone for something you would prefer to keep private. Especially if as expected its like every other phone out there which is a slab that's all screen. Far too easy to hit the wrong thing on screen and can see a lot of accidents happening this way. If nothing else expect to see the amount of posts on Lamebook increase dramatically.
Interesting split between how the various manufacturers make their money...
Facebook & Google are mostly about advertising, and collecting as much info about you as possible to improve the value of those adverts.
Microsoft is all about software, selling that to other companies to make the actual phones.
Samsung & Apple (+HTC, etc) are mostly about selling hardware (though Apple arguably are fully integrated software + hardware + services).
Amazon... well I guess they want you to use their devices to buy content from them, which is where they make most money.
Of those, Facebook & Google are definitely least appealing, though along with Amazon are likely to be cheaper up-front to get you in.
> Microsoft is all about software,
No. Wrong. Microsoft is also about collecting data and targeting advertising.
> https://advertising.microsoft.com/splitter
"""Reach your audience through MSN, Xbox, and Skype"""
"""Find out how our insights and data can help increase your ROI"""
the thing with this, is that if somebody plans on making a facebook phone then they believe there is a market for it.... and there probably is.....
there are a lot of people that buy expensive phones and all they do is go on facebook anyway, so why not produce a phone that just has all the functions of facebook and sell it cheap, if not give it away with a 18 month data tariff?
Its not something I would buy, but there are quite a few people that use facebook that I know would use this...
>"I constantly wish I could get Facebook OFF of my phone."
What kind of phone do you have that you can't get rid of Facebook? That and Twitter were the first things to go to the trash on my phone. If I recall, the icons wouldn't delete on my old Crackberry, but I just made them invisible and didn't worry about them - they weren't taking any real space on the system.
Paris - because we are both confused, and we both miss our Crackberry's.
Who is really so addicted to Facebook that they are willing to go on a two year contract and be stuck with a Facebook-centric phone? I don't call people on my Facebook list. I don't even have them lumped into my current phone's phone book. Given the privacy concerns with Facebook as it is, who's really going to buy into this? They won't sell as many of these as Microsoft and Blackberry has of theirs. This is going to be a huge failure for Facebook.
Too right. The FB app is by far the #1 most likely app on my phone to crash too. I typically use the browser and visit their web site when I want to look at my lolcats, rather than use their terrible app. An entire OS? It'll be the next Microsoft Kin. I may have checked to see if this was an April Fools joke, but it's not funny, and the dateline says it was a few days ago.
> "Facebook OS?" Kill it with fire!
I can understand why you wouldn't want one, but why would you care if others would want to buy it ? What harm does it do to you ?
It is almost like you want to reduce choice so that, perhaps, they _have_ to buy what you have chosen to suit your needs.
Do Nissan owners want to blow up Toyotas ?
This is another step for Facebook in concreting itself in our daily lives. Another recent move was them incorporating online banking for certain banks. They want to own the social experience and their challenge is leading the way. Things evolve fast and they don't want to be the next MySpace.
Dusty
White Root Media
You'll have to agree to be called by FB advertisers pitching everything you "like" and everything any of your contacts "like". Best of all, it will upload all the data on your phone and automatically bill you for using their services unless you "opt out" by buying another non-FB phone.
Didn't this kind of approach sink AOL as a popular ISP ?
Despite the efforts of other anachronistic regimes -- China etc -- it soon becomes obvious to users that the point of the internet (and of phones) is universal access, regardless of device, provider, location.
There was a time when AOL and Compuserve were dominant. The early cellphone internet services were severely restricted. And soon gone once universal internet access became available.
The other potential mishap is the strong likelihood that FB will trawl users contact lists (as it seems to do judging by the obscure "Friend" requests I get) and start pestering non-FB phone users. This viral approach would find any buyers of FB branded phone ostracised and forced to ditch FB, or ditch the phone.
Ac because I don't want to be laughed out of these forums but really..... What's so bad about it?
privacy is an issue yes,but if you don't want something available for the world to see just don't put it online. People seem to really detest facebook round here and im just not sure why. The most annoying thing I find is the invites to daft games and stupid chain letters that the unwashed masses seem to send on religiously.
I expect a great many down votes for this, so the rule is, if you bother to Down vote at least answer my question!
It depends on your point of view and how involved you get. If you trust a corporation to hold that much personal information about yourself then good for you, after all corporates have such a good track record keeping data safe and not selling it to whoever asks. For myself, I object mostly to the spyware posing as apps/games and the facile nature of people who believe interacting on Facebook is in someway important. Attempting to keep your personal data private is pretty much a waste of time in an era when government agencies sell whatever they can get their hands on, but jumping on a website and actually helping them on purpose seems a pretty obvious exercise in self harm.
If you trust a corporation to hold that much personal information about yourself then good for you
I'm not fond of Facebook, but I've had an account for years, in order to receive event invitations from people who insist on sending them through Facebook. (I'd dispense with that use as well, but then my wife gets annoyed that I never know what's supposed to be happening in our social life.)
But Facebook doesn't "hold ... much personal information" about me. There's no need to give Facebook any great amount of personal information - certainly nothing that's not readily available to anyone who cares to do a bit of online research. Facebook doesn't force anyone to post status updates or "like" anything or join groups or play games or upload photos. It's entirely possible to have a Facebook account and still refrain from using the features you dislike.
It's gone from being a simple site to a big portal. It will end up having it's own search engine, mapping system and beyond.
It has to earn money too, so you can imagine that your information is sold for analysis.
Try deleting your data, it takes two weeks for them to cancel your profile.
...The reason Google made the head of Chrome OS take charge of Android as well. Looks like Google will no longer spend any more resources on the Android as the competition forks Android and takes benefit of Google's work while not contributing back to Google. With Chrome OS, possibly this could be reduced.
...it seems that after all those Symbian phones weren't so bad after all.
Anyway if this happens then incompatibility comes creeping in when certain apps won't work on FB's or Amazon's iteration of Android. Which will inevitably lead to Android's demise. Or at least it will stop the overtaking o/t other platforms since it'll be a divided camp.
Then it'll become just as messy as Linux. With every Distro being slightly different (usually enough to break something). This is good news for Apple and Microsoft. Divide and conquer under the motto "more competition is better for capitalism". Fools
The significant growth of the tablet market with Amazon Kindle series and B&B Nook devices based on Android kernel, and no the introduction of specialized smartphones from Amazon and Facebook must place an enormous burden on potential Microsoft Windows 8 smartphone sales, further exacerbated by the successful sales rollout of new Blackberry 10 phones.
I look forward to even more smartphone OS choices introduced into USA based on FirefoxOS and or Ubuntu Mobile mobile operating systems that were exceptionally well received in Europe and by the behemoths of Huawei and ZTE of China. This would certainly create a bonanza for purchaser choice, which would complimented by more mobile Carrier selections and more reasonable subscription rates.
Will Facebook and soon Google become direct Mobile carriers to compete with the big four?
Every time one makes a telephone call, it'll post the details to your Facebook page: "Bob is calling Becky." "Bob is now calling Barbara, his wife." "Bob is calling Becky again."
Barbara has logged into Facebook. "Barbara is calling Fred, a divorce lawyer..."
Some people forget how Facebook works.
Rather feebly, so it depends which provider you are on and whether the cafe's wifi owner has a VPN.
This very slack blocking is rather effective as no-one really tried to get around it, they just wait and go somewhere else... end result is an intermittent (at best) facebook connection..
It is rather disappointing that while many on here no doubt built the early web having to remember file sizes and load times, modern developers (particularly in the US) seem to assume an always on connection, which is not even possible with 4G .. yet fail to code to graceful failure.
Recently my samsung phone stopped making calls. The android parts are fine, but no calls. So since i expected this day, when the first iphone came along ("how long before they dont make calls anymore hehe").
I have gone back to a nokia 120 and its tablets all the way now... phones screens are too small anyway, hence the raft fo monster screen 'phones'.
Bring on the FB phone, i doubt it will be that significant a player for a long time, i know as a developer I wont be rushing to get any of the following:
FB Phone
Firefox Phone
Ubunto Phone.
Or code for them unless the client pays ALL the costs.
Lately I've been paying less and less attention to my Facebook. I don't really login as much as I used to, I am deleting more and more of my info, deleting pics and posting less and less information about myself and I'm even considering ditching my Facebook account completely. My friends and family know how to contact me if something important comes up. I really doubt I'd miss Facebook at this point.
This article made me wonder...if Facebook is noticing a trend in people like me who are simply spending less and less time with it, losing interest and debating closing down our accounts.
It makes sense that Zuckspergers would create technology that makes his service an absolute essential service in order to use the device. An FB account with a warm body associated with it is very valuable to Zuckspergers and advertisers. It's all about Zuckspergers ego and investors after all.
Of course its all just speculation. The reality is I don't really give a grumpy cats arse. If I managed to survive never owning an iPhone I'm sure I can survive not having an FB phone, and I am quite sure I can survive without FB...period. Let someone else give away their personal details for free to some corporation that is earning billions of dollars off of you. I also wouldn't miss knowing that thanks to FBs 'privacy' features it makes it easier for my ex's to stalk me (which I do know for a fact that they do.)
My priorities are changing. Tech gadgets and memes are not on the top of my list anymore so Zuck can stick it where his aspergers don't shine.
One thing I'd miss though is...George Takai. But then again, I'd still survive.
- A smartphone is an increasingly popular communications device.
- Lots of people use Facebook to communicate.
- Google would like to replace Facebook.
- Facebook would like more people to use Facebook.
I can see that for business reasons a Facebook-centric fork makes sense to Facebook.
I find it funny that you self-righteous tossers posting how shit Facebook is don't see the irony in posting your vapid opinions on the web.
Instead of multiple apps running on a phone, perhaps we're moving to a world of one locked down app per phone, so I'll buy a twitterphone, a facebookphone, an amazonphone, a yahoo!phone (the size of a house brick, just showing last week's weather in California) and so on. Only the skypephone will let me make and take calls. Sometimes.
Dave just added contact "julie" to his phone contacts, Like 3 Comments 2
..
Dave Just called a contact "Sex Line" for 2 mins 3 seconds, Like 15 Comments 22
..
Dave just added contact "Annoying Fred" to his Blocked callers list , Like 2 Comments 2
..
Dave just took call while driving, Like 0 Comments 11
I can see having a friend with a Facebook phone being really really annoying.
So what will google turn into closed/paid access only next?
Maybe this is the year Google feel the pressure.
Samsung launch Tizen devices
Amazon launch a phone
Facebook take the lions share of low end phone?
looking around me travelling into work Facebook is the no 1 use of phones. Make a Facebook phone which is free on a low cost contract or payg and it become the fastest selling phone.
While i'm sure it won't be a popular opinion here, my cheap lumia 620 (1/2 the price) out performs my Galaxy Nexus for signal and data on the same network on the same journey to work. No drop-outs or disconnects with the lumia.
maybe i'm wierd because like to talk on my phone, as well as stream radio, so find having a mobile signal useful.
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