Facebook For Every Phone Reaches 100 Million User Milestone
Yesterday, Growth Manager Ran Makavy announced that Facebook For Every Phone, the social media giant’s native app for feature phones, has been downloaded 100 million times.Facebook For Every Phone, which was launched almost exactly two years ago, provides feature phone owners with the most popular Facebook features available on the smartphone equivalent, making it the ideal Facebook app for people unable to afford smartphones in developing nations such as India and Indonesia.
With Facebook For Every Phone, users can access the news feed and Facebook Messenger, scroll through photos, find friends and even create a whole new account. For many in developing nations, feature phones provide their basic (and in some cases only) internet access, so it is important that any apps downloaded onto it provide a similar experience to their desktop and smartphone counterparts.
The Facebook For Every Phone app is compatible with over 3,000 different feature phones, many of which cost less than $20 – a far cry from the hundreds of dollars people pay for the latest smartphones. According to Makavy, the app is developed to be fast, cheap and easy to use:
This experience is optimized to use less data than other Java apps and mobile sites, making it more affordable to try and use. We also have partnerships with mobile operators around the world to offer free or discounted data access to Facebook For Every Phone.Makavy was one of the Snaptu team that developed the precursor to Facebook For Every Phone, also called Snaptu. Snaptu, an Israeli mobile platform founded in 2007, was acquired by Facebook in 2011. Makavy gives a brief description of Snaptu in his announcement post:
Snaptu's platform uses the power of servers to accelerate and optimize the way mobile apps work, and is the key to providing a great user experience on low-end devices.Facebook For Every Phone is an important part of the social media giant’s global strategy: not only does it cement Facebook’s place in huge emerging markets, it also helps the company achieve its mission, enabling “people around the globe to connect to the people and things they care about most, no matter what kind of mobile device they use”
How important do you think this milestone is for Facebook?
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Facebook For Every Phone Reaches 100 Million User Milestone
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Monday, July 22, 2013
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