As such, Facebook on Thursday debuted a new feature-phone app, which NetworkEffect calls "kind of a gateway drug for both Facebook participation and
mobile data usage."
This past summer, as Computerworld notes, Facebook's
mobile products chief Eric Tseng said mobile was the company's biggest growth engine. Facebook, therefore, doesn't have time to wait around for every consumer to upgrade to a smartphone.
According to Silicon Valley designer Luke Wroblewski, there's even a poster in Facebook's headquarters, which reads:
"You Don't Get To 500 Million Mobile Users Without A Few Feature Phones."
What's more, as Business Insider notes, "More people have mobile phones than have the
internet, and most of those people are in the developing world ... Being at the ground level of this huge trend is a really big deal for Facebook."
On the news, ReadWriteWeb asks: "How long will it take for Facebook to reach 1 billion users now that it can
reach the entire feature phone bearing world?"