Facebook Mobile : extended

Facebook announced deeper level mobile application integration and new markup tags for exclusive mobile content yesterday on their developers platform (as well as some further SMS integration). They also announced their banner ad funding global parter as Microsoft for a small equity stake and $240m. Russell Beattie has done a quick developer's viewpoint and is not impressed.

Facebook differentiated quickly from the rest of the pack (as social networks begin to commoditise), by launching their F8 developer platform. MySpace and now Friendster have followed suit.

This looks like a move to stay ahead of the web based competition. Any Social Network worth it's salt will have to integrate mobile very quickly or from the off (and do it properly). I'd love to know the page views from mobile though to see if it's increasing against fixed web access.

Facebook has some competition when it comes to mobile, with the established mobile social networks (mososo's) already up and running and catering to lots of different niches (dating / content-sharing etc..) let alone every man and his dog trying to bring a social networking element to their mobile service if it's not part of the proposition already ...