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Facebook has intensified its focus on smartphones and is slowly turning its staff into mobile engineers. Photo: AP

Facebook targets smartphones

Facebook
AFP

Facebook has shaken up its engineering teams to make targeting smartphones a priority at the world's leading social network.

"We have really just re-organised the company to build faster on mobile," Facebook director of product management Peter Deng said at the company's campus in Menlo Park, California on Thursday.

"In the past six months we transplanted mobile engineers to the other teams," he continued. "Slowly, over time we are making everyone a mobile engineer."

Facebook users have been shifting from accessing the social network on desktop computers or laptops to smartphones and tablet computers, where the company doesn't serve-up money-making ads.

About 7,000 different models of mobile devices are used daily to connect with Facebook and the challenge is to tailor experiences for each gadget, according to Facebook product manager Mick Johnson.

A focus on HTML 5 technology to connect across the spectrum of smartphones using mobile web browsers resulted in lacklustre results, according to Facebook.

"The performance wasn't what our users expected and we weren't happy with it either," Johnson said.

Facebook released a rebuilt application for iPhones a few weeks ago and saw its rating in Apple's online App Store go from two to four stars.

"Internally, we are psyched," Johnson said. "This is really just the start of the road for us; there are many things we want to do."

Facebook director of developer products Dough Purdy pulled an iPhone from one pocket of his jeans and an Android-powered smartphone from another, referring to them as the most social devices people have ever had.

Giving outside developers tools to optimise Facebook-synched applications for users of Apple or Android gadgets is part of the company's intensified focus on mobile, according to Purdy.

"Facebook has become a powerful engine for third-party developers to acquire new users," Purdy said. "And gaining new users is the name of the game; it is how you make money in this new world." About 225 million people each month go to the Facebook App Centre.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Facebook targets smartphones as its top priority
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