Mobile

According to Natasha Lomas, more than 1 million Blackberry users have downloaded the Facebook application since its launch five months ago. This is an impressive statistic but also highlights how niche this market is. I have been impressed with the Facebook Blackberry application so far but ultimately there are a few downfalls.

If I had to make an educated guess, I would say that there are probably more iPhone users accessing Facebook on a daily basis than the total number of users that have downloaded the Facebook Blackberry application. While 1 million users is no number to sneeze at, it is nothing compared to the millions of iPhone owners. It would be great to take a look at Blackberry social network statistics versus iPhone social networking stats.

I would love to see an updated version of the Facebook application that enables users to browse their friends’ profiles, appraove friend requests and synchronizes read and unread messages with the web based version. These are some great stats for Facebook though and it will be interesting to see if this growth continues in the coming months. My guess is that it will!

We have all heard about internet dating and finding true love via a social network. Well Karen over at Cordarouns.com is about it hit the streets of San Fransisco looking for her true love.

Karen has enlisted a myriad of social tools to help her on her quest ranging from Facebook and the video/picture/text streaming service Zannel. Karen is going to hit the streets in an 8 hour frenzy to find her man.

To read the rest of this article please visit The Social Times.

Jeremy Kirk over at Computer World is reporting today that Facebook has signed an agreement with Vodafone, a Europe based wireless provider, to launch Facebook mobile in the UK and Germany.

Facebook also plans to launch a similar mobile site in Greece, Italy, Ireland and Portugal. This is a huge step for Facebook as the mobile market in Europe is much larger than the market in the US.

I am not saying that Europe has more cell phones than the US but mobile Europeans use their phones much differently than Americans. The European model for mobile focuses more on total integration than simple call connection.

Currently the Facebook mobile site has no advertising and integrates MMS as the primary form of image and video loading. Unlike the US mobile site the European site focuses on letting users create and operate a Facebook profile sans a standard computer.

The idea is to lure more users to Facebook by removing the necessity of a computer to connect socially online. Creating a strong foothold in Europe will allow Facebook to assure its growth will continue as more and more people turn to mobile solutions for all their networking needs.

Would you be more apt to use Facebook more often if you didn’t need log into a computer and could use the entire site from your mobile? Do you use mobile Facebook now? What functions would you like to see on mobile Facebook?

I have been using the Facebook Blackberry application since it launched almost two weeks ago. My first impressions were amazing. The new interface makes it so much easier for me to navigate through my regularly used Facebook items. Everytime I received a message or a friend request it was sending it to my phone. Rather than having to read the Facebook alert emails that provide you with no details about the messages received, I could access them immediately.

The main downfall with this is that each of the messages and requests were stored locally on my cell phone. After just a week of messages and requests, my memory on my Blackberry Curve was immediately overloaded. Subsequently, all of my email, my call history and all my Facebook messages were deleted! While this could have been a practically catastrophic event, I’m am fortunate enough to have all of my email synced with Gmail.

While Facebook should not be held responsible for any bugs with my Blackberry, I would suggest that they redesign the application so that it is less reliant on local memory and instead stores actual messages on their own servers. Honestly, I think the main issue is with my Blackberry phone but my phone had been fine until I added this application. In addition to memory issues on the phone, Facebook has a number of missing features on their Facebook application including the ability to view profiles, marking messages as unread and a number of other features.

I hate to do it but I may have to remove the Facebook application until they can figure out a way to take up less memory on my phone. Has anyone else had this problem?

Today, AdMob, a mobile advertising provider, launched a new advertising system for the Facebook mobile platform. As announced a few days ago, Facebook has expanded their platform to provide developers with the ability to build Facebook applications. The new ad network displays text ads at the top of applications. This network is the first monetization solution for all Facebook developers that are launching applications.

As I wrote the other day, developers have tons of monetization tools to select from but this is currently the only mobile one. The real benefit here is that AdMob already has the ability to fill inventory given that they have served over 9.6 billion ads. This contrasts with the current Facebook advertising solutions who are finding it extremely challenging to fill all of the invetory being required by some of the most popular applications.

If you want to learn more about mobile advertising on Facebook, check out the AdMob Facebook mobile advertising page.

A few of my friends have decided to switch from using Twitter to simply updating their Facebook status from their mobile phone. Whether you are contemplating making the switch or still debating what to do, Austin Thomas Griffith has made an application so you don’t have to decide. FBTwit is a simple application that automatically updates your Twitter with your Facebook status. I have a feeling applications like this one will become priceless that have their updates distributed across a number of disconnected networks. I have yet to make the shift to Facebook and chose just to put Twitter on my Facebook profile. This would definitely be a good alternative though saving me precious space on my Facebook profile. I think it is time to make the switch. For those of you that are still deciding which network to use for keeping your friends up to date, or for those that are bogged down with making updates on both sites, go grab the FBTwit application and make your life a little easier.

Remember all the hype surrounding mobile blogging a couple years back? No? Well there was and now it’s back! Thanks to Mojungle you can share your life in real-time with your cell phone. All of your pictures will show up on your Facebook profile. The mojungle player is pretty slick and a great application if you want to easily share your mobile pictures with your friends. If you want to get in on the moblogging action go check out the application. Be careful though because it’s a mojungle out there!

Want to let Facebook users text you from your profile without giving out your phone number? Thanks to Sandy McFadden, now you can. The “Text Me” application adds a “Text Me” button to your profile which friends can click to send a text message to your cell phone. This is pretty slick but I’m not sure I want to have people texting me non-stop. I’d much rather them send me a Facebook message and I will check it when I get the chance. If you are really my friend then most likely you have my number anyways. Text Me is powered by FreeTextMsgs.com. If you would like to add text capabilities to your profile then go grab the TextMe application.