Posted by The Blogging Desk on Tue, Sep 21, 2010
Facebook is building a mobile phone, says a source who has knowledge of the project. Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware. Specifically, Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone. It can only do that if it controls the operating system.
Two high level Facebook employees – Joe Hewitt
and Matthew Papakipos – are said to be secretly working on the project, which is unknown even to most Facebook staff.
Both have deep operating system experience.
Hewitt helped create the Firefox browser and was working on Parakey before it was acquired by Facebook in 2007. Parakey, which never launched, was described as a “Web-based operating system.” Hewitt also created all of Facebook’s iPhone web apps and then native apps, but finally quit building for the iPhone in disgust late last year. But he knows operating systems and he knows mobile.
I don't know about you, but every morning I wake up dreaming about a Facebook phone. A phone that will let me send texts in-game while playing Mafia, Bejewelled and Farmville. Wait, no. That's a terrible idea.
Why on Earth would anyone want to use a Facebook phone? Doesn't anyone remember all the of the privacy issues we went through months ago? Facebook had made updates to their settings which pretty much made your profile public if you didn't keep an eye on it. What would some of the Facebook integration be on this phone?
Add your call history to your wall so that friends can comment on it? Maybe my wife can "like" when I call the local gentlemen's club to confirm my reservation? I'm not sure how that would float.
My only guess is that this phone would be geared towards the tween market. You know the kind; young kids using the hardware keyboard phones, typing away feverishly as if their life depended on it. My boy better not grow up like that.
He's going to use a virtual keyboard like a real man.
Sure, this article had next to nothing about IT support in Wayne, PA. But, MAN was it entertaining, right?
