Facebook Inc (FB): Going Mobile In More Ways Than One

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg did candidly admit that his social-networking site was a little slow to the mobile platform party, and he said he was committing a large number of resources to catch up and become a mobile company – both in terms of user experience on mobile devices as well as in terms of advertising. The investment has started to pay dividends, as the company posted its best revenue quarter in its brief time as a publicly traded company – with one-third of the revenue coming from mobile devices and more than 60 percent of users accessing the network from a mobile device – and the trajectory seems to be positive for the network going forward.

As mobile has been maturing and advancing in technology, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has been working hard to keep up and move ahead on mobile devices as the top choice for many a social mobile devicer. Having success in mobile has been vital for Facebook, but does it hurt that there is talk of a developer exodus in regards to gaming?

Facebook gained a lot of visit and “stickiness” when it teamed with Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) to develop a spectrum of social games like FarmVille which brought many users and kept them on Facebook laying and communication with friends. But with various changes and transitions at Facebook, there is a belief that game developers have left Facebook in droves, instead gloaming onto iOS by Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Android by Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG).

Not so fast, said Simon Cross, developer relations manager at Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) in a recent interview. The developer exodus from Facebook is just a myth. In fact, he says Facebook is being mobile in another way besides developing apps to be on mobile devices; Facebook is moving as a feature within many games, so developers don’t need Facebook as a platform.

They integrate Facebook into the game, not vice versa. “So this is something that people get wrong all the time, and I’ll be really clear about this,” Cross said. “Are developers moving away from Facebook? No. They’re building Facebook into their apps. Just because they’re building iOS and Android versions of their apps, does that mean they’re moving away from Facebook? No.”

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) reportedly gave $2 billion to game developers last year, adding that about 100 developers each earned $1 million for their games that utilize Facebook’s platform as their social fabric. “That just speaks to everything that we’re trying to do,” Cross said. “It’s just about being the social layer on every app, on every platform, that’s where we want to be.”

What do you think about Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and it impact on mobile platforms? Do you see the mobile environment become more social, or less, where the Facebook platform will be more or less important as more people go mobile? Let us know your thoughts on this in the comments section below.

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