Facebook's scattered mobile strategy
At a highly anticipated conference on March 2 at the 2015 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Mark Zuckerberg is expected to shed light on Facebook's mobile strategy. Despite being the world's leading social network, with over 1 billion users, the company is struggling somewhat in the mobile space due to the constant innovation of its competitors.
While the Facebook app for mobile provides access to all of the site's features, from account settings to photos and the newsfeed, the separate Messenger app connects users to its text and voice chat service. This separate app is designed to offer easy communication between friends who have installed it, including free unlimited voice calls over a WiFi connection.
But Messenger, far from winning over all of Facebook's billion-plus users, has run up against several popular and innovative alternatives, one of the best known of which is WhatsApp, which the social network attempted to buy in 2014. Facebook's other competitors in the mobile messaging app space include Skype (Microsoft), Hangouts (Google), Line and possibly even BBM (BlackBerry).
Multiple ideas, multiple apps
Aside from its namesake app, Facebook has at least one other successful app: Instagram. The platform known for its famous photo filters has won over users with its exhaustive set of tools for taking, editing and sharing photos and videos.
The social network giant has encountered less success with the little-known apps Rooms and Paper (for iOS). The former creates virtual chat rooms, while the latter, along the lines of FlipBoard, aims to tell "illustrated stories" in a virtual magazine format. Also worth noting is Facebook Home, a user interface layer that places the social network at the center of the experience on the latest Android phones.
Along the way, Facebook has also launched short-lived apps such as Poke (since replaced by Slingshot) -- a Snapchat alternative designed for sending messages that self-destruct a few seconds after being read -- and Camera, offered briefly as an alternative to Instagram for editing and sharing photos.
Currently in the works at the internet giant, which owns the virtual reality headset manufacturer Oculus, is a new virtual reality app.
Mobile World Congress takes place in Barcelona from March 2 to 5. Website:www.mobileworldcongress.com
