A F-Fone from Facebook? Thumbs down from me

A recent rumour in Techcrunch has led to all sorts of speculation as to whether or not Facebook will  launch its own mobile phone operating system. Given the standard of spelling and invective on Facebook, I think we could usefully call this potential development the 'F-Fone'. 

Because of the privacy issues spawned by Facebook every day, I wouldn't trust such an operating system one jot, nor would I be inclined to call someone who was running it on the basis that my number would probably be harvested without consent and end up shared somewhere in Farmville. In fact, other mobile developers might do well to build in an 'F-Fone' detector application so that we could be alerted and hang up.

Facebook launched Places in the US in August and in the UK over the last few days, rivalling mobile apps like Foursquare and Gowalla. With mobility on the rise, a phone operating system is not beyond the bounds of possibility and no doubt makes commercial sense.  I just hope for all our sakes that people are not gullible enough to use it due to the amount of data likely to be harvested in the process. If you have any doubts about their ability to harvest information from people who do not want to use the Facebook platform, check out their community page fiasco, which I blogged about here.  My vote for an F-Fone? Thumbs Down. F-fingers crossed it stays a rumour.

 

Comments

[Amanda H.]

Hi,
I just read your blog post about the Facebook phone rumor. I don't think the average person realizes how much information a phone linked with social media would be able to pick up. It is really scary, hopefully before they get any sort of prototype going people will begin to understand, somehow, hopefully. There’s a video that relates to this I think you’d really enjoy.

http://www.newsy.com/videos/is-facebook-developing-a-phone/

The story discusses different articles and videos that relate to the potential Facebook phone. I hope you’ll check it out and consider embedding or linking this video to the article. Newsy offers multiple sources and views on an issue in a short video clip. If you have any questions, let me know. Thanks!