“Facebook said it could team up with mobile operators on payments, in an offer that would give them back part of the revenue and influence they have lost in recent years to Apple and Google,” Georgina Prodhan reports for Reuters.
“Mobile operators have been increasingly sidelined by internet companies, which often appeal directly to consumers, hog network capacity with bandwidth-hungry services like YouTube, and compete with the telcos’ own products,” Prodhan reports. “‘Facebook and mobile were made for each other,’ chief technology officer Bret Taylor said on Monday, echoing then-Google chief executive Eric Schmidt’s first overtures to the industry at the Barcelona event two years ago.”
Prodhan reports, “Taylor said operators could play a vital role in billing for Facebook’s services, potentially putting the 30 percent tolls that Apple and Google collect in their app stores in the hands of the operators instead. The billing alliance includes eight major carriers such as Spanish group Telefonica, U.S. operator AT&T and Japanese company Softbank.”
Read more in the full article here.
Facebook will be irrelevant within 2 years. Teenagers are already starting to leave. My niece says she and her friends consider FB “so yesterday”.
Not a FB fan, but a user base in sight of 1 trillion is not going away. Your sample size of 1 has a bit of a margin of error.
Billion? Maybe. Trillion? I think not.
Cut him some slack. He doesn’t understand statistics and numbers.
The current world population is 6.8 billion, Oblong..the 1 trillion FaceBook users you are quoting must be your fellow aliens from the galaxy Andromeda.
Lifts left pinky to edge of mouth…
Says in a snarky manner, “One trillion billion flies use FaceBook.”
“hog network capacity with bandwidth-hungry services…”
…that the telcos already fleecing their customers with double and triple dip data cap packages and over charges.
Now they want to also charge content providers on top…
Greedy f$&@&$ing bastards.
As Apple moves to iMessage, Facebook moves to the Telcos. If AT&T, et al can wrest back any of their former “crapware” type power we are in for dark days for the consumer.
Hear, hear. I totally agree.
I’m totally not getting this.
How is this possible?
“Taylor said operators could play a vital role in billing for Facebook’s services, potentially putting the 30 percent tolls that Apple and Google collect in their app stores in the hands of the operators instead. “
Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense.
Yawn Facebook…their greatest (only?) accomplishment has been grouping all the clueless people of the planet under one domain. Now to figure out how to exterminate them…muahahaha
I thought the main goal of Facebook was to allow Mark Zuckerburg to check out pictures of half naked teenage girls.