Facebook may be the most-downloaded free application on the iPhone, but today the companya4‚¬a4„s chief technology officer Bret Taylor seemed more excited about the opportunities offered by the mobile Web and HTML5.
Taylor was speaking today at the Inside Social Apps InFocus conference in San Francisco (he&'s pictured above at Facebook&'s f8 conference last year), where he said that mobile will be the a4‚¬Aprimary focusa4‚¬¯ of the Facebook platform team this year. Facebook has said for a while now that it wants to be the a4‚¬Asocial layera4‚¬¯ in all mobile applications, and while Taylor acknowledged that Facebook could still do more on that front, he highlighted improvements Facebook has made recently, particularly the single sign-on feature that it announced in November.
Moving forward, Taylor said that Facebook has been feeling some pain in supporting so many different platforms. If the company wants to roll out a new feature, it has to add it on Facebook.com, across its various mobile and tablet websites, and across its multiple mobile applications. And if thata4‚¬a4„s a problem for Facebook, it&'s also a problem for any other developer.
a4‚¬AOver the long term, most people really view HTML5 as the future platform that wea4‚¬a4„re going to be looking to,a4‚¬¯ Taylor said. He said that tech companies in Silicon Valley are probably a little ahead of the reality in their focus on HTML5, but HTML5 products are going to be a4‚¬Aa huge amount of our investment over the next yeara4‚¬¯, not just spending on Facebook itself but also on developer tools.
The debate about the advantages of HTML5 (the latest version of the basic format of the Web) versus native apps is one thata4‚¬a4„s been going on for a while, and to be clear Taylor didna4‚¬a4„t sound like he was coming down definitively on one side or the other. But it still seems significant that he was so pro-HTML5, since Facebook has had such success on the native side, and since Facebooka4‚¬a4„s former iPhone developer famously went on a rant about the limitations of HTML5.
Taylor didn&'t just talk about mobile. He said that in 2010, Facebook&'s main focus for the platform was on the user experience, and that the team succeeded in cutting back spam in users&' newsfeeds and messages by 95 percent. This year the company is turning its attention to growth. He cited Zynga&'s game CityVille, which reached 100 million users in 43 days, as an example of how quickly an app can grow now.
Next Story: You know whata4‚¬a4„s cool 8 Oscar nominations for The Social Network Previous Story: With Amazon Tote, Amazon.com wants to set a weekly shopping date
Print Email Twitter Facebook Google Buzz LinkedIn Digg StumbleUpon Reddit Delicious Google More&8230'
Companies: Facebook
People: Bret Taylor
Companies: Facebook
People: Bret Taylor
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.
Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.com
VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters. Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.
Discuss Add this link to... Bury
Comments