The Social Squeeze!

The time has come.  Dedicated devices for Facebook.  HTC unveiled two devices in

Barcelona, the HTC Salsa and the HTC ChaCha (pictured right).  The phones come equipped with everything you need to make Facebook more a part of your life.  They even have a dedicated Facebook button on the phones that is context-aware and lights up whenever you receive a status update, message, check into a location, etc.

Article courtesy of ZDNet.

Today at 10AM PST, Facebook is set to announce a few new initiatives.  Many believe the new initiatives are mobile centric, relating to a possible Facebook phone or discuss a deeper integration with Skype.  According to Marketing VOX, earlier this year, rumors swirled about Project Titan, the code named email project.  It supposedly will be an actual email system (POP3/IMAP and SMTP).  Facebook users would be able to have their own @facebook.com email alias.

The mass that is Facebook, roughly 500 million users, could possibly take over the email world.  Instantly, you would have 500 million email users under the Facebook umbrella.  If Facebook’s interface is simple, clean, and easy to user (e.g. Gmail-esque), I could really see many users from other cluttered clients (Yahoo, Hotmail) make a permanent switch.

Why, you ask?  Well, the folks at Facebook are always trying to explore new ways to allow advertisers greater reach to their 500 million users.  An email client would allow specific ads based on the email content (similar to how Gmail works).  This has been a huge success for Gmail, which has roughly 200 million members.  An @facebook.com email client is a win win for many, and will push online marketers to become much more integrated into social media, and social media spending.

(Source: marketingvox.com)