MSFN Forum: Facebook Could Change Telephones Forever

There is no Facebook phone, the world's largest social network told everyone firmly last year. Instead, the company said this afternoon, there are "dozens" of phones that will include a deep software integration with Facebook features and some with Facebook branding on the hardware. Make no mistake, Facebook is taking clear steps to use software and brand licensing to change the way we relate to our phones. Might this new level of socialization of the phone be of comparable historic impact to telephone network interoperability or the rise of the mobile phone?

What does this kind of integration mean for users? It means that our online multi-media social connections, with the very different texture of interactions we've had with them, will now intersect with the old-fashioned world of telephone calls. Looking at the interface above, there's so much more going on here than pressing numbers to start a voice exchange.

It means that the interruptive nature of voice and SMS is now combined with the ever-present stream of the Facebook Newsfeed. That feed will be neither one-to-one like most phone calls are today, nor many-to-many like the old fashioned telephone "party lines." On those party lines neighbors all spoke at once on a common line, sharing gossip and arguments. They had to ask everyone else to get off the phone in order to have important, private calls.

Instead, a Facebook phone will offer a visual presentation of many different individuals' broadcasts and interactions among themselves. You may pick up your phone and see an update from your mother, followed by an update from your co-worker, but those two people might not ever know each other. They have their own view into the intersecting streams of personal updates and activities of the people they know.

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