Facebook yet again is opting to extend its partnership with Apple. Earlier during the day there was news from the social networking giant that it had announced an official iPad app, which was one of the ‘most awaited’ apps on iPad. Now, it has come up with its Facebook Platform in the mobile world and for the start, it would be supporting Apple iOS apart from its own mobile website. The move opted by Facebook would help developers to take advantage of social channels for app discovery as well as the Facebook Credits payment system.
As of now, Facebook stressed that developers can make use of the above mentioned two main mobile platforms and at the same time it even said that the company was working hard on coming up with other platforms, clearly noting to-do list, and even specifically mentioned Google’s Android.
Facebook notified that its aim is to expand its social channels, which have been of help to pass on apps and games to hundreds of millions of users on the Web to mobile apps and mobile websites. However, for the same to happen, Facebook would develop these features as they are still under developed. They expect it to evolve in the months to come.
The announcement from Facebook came for 5 social channels on mobiles, which would make use of the Facebook Platform to drive the discovery and distribution of apps. Till now, one would have found most of them available only on websites and apps on a desktop browser pointed to facebook.com. One can find the details of the five new features as below:
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Bookmarks: Bookmarks are one of the key re-engagement channels for Facebook apps. When a user engages with their app, a bookmark to their app is automatically added to a user’s main navigation on Facebook. If a user taps on their app bookmark in Facebook’s iOS apps, it will launch directly.
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Requests: With the new Requests dialog for mobile, users can invite their friends to use their app. Friends can receive requests anywhere where their app is supported. As with bookmarks, users will tap the notification and land directly on the mobile version of their app, whether it is a native iOS app or a mobile website.
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News Feed: Users can already use the Feed dialog to share highlights from apps, but until now they have not been able to interact with those stories on their mobile devices.
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Authenticated Referrals: Authenticated referrals is a new feature that ensures all referral traffic from Facebook to their app has users connected to the social network. When users search and find a new app, or taps on a News Feed story or a Request from a mobile app they haven’t previously used, they will be prompted to log in before going to the app.
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Facebook Credits: Facebook Credits now supports mobile web apps. The same policies are also extended to mobile web apps, requiring all games to use Facebook Credits as their exclusive payment mechanism. This means a consistent experience for users buying virtual goods in games, and it also makes sure Facebook gets its 30 percent cut. There is an exception though: native iOS apps and mobile web apps that are running within a Facebook iOS app don’t have to use Facebook Credits.
Before these two announcements, Facebook had pronounced that it had 350 million mobile active users and Erick Tseng, head of mobile products at Facebook, even noted that they are going to become a mobile company.