• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, November 3, 2010

With a mobile audience reaching 200 million users worldwide, Facebook unveiled several new initiatives to capitalize on its rapidly growing presence beyond the desktop.

The company launched new features for its mobile platform allowing users to log into third-party applications with a single sign-on, see friends' check-ins across location-based services, and find deals from nearby businesses on their phone. The Deals offering debuting in the latest version of Facebook's iPhone app kicks off with 22 national brands including The Gap, The North Face and The Palms resort.

Facebook also said it was adding Groups and its new Places social location service to the latest version of its Android app.

In announcing the new mobile moves at a press conference at Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the aim was to help outside developers build social elements into mobile apps across the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and other major smartphone platforms. "Our goal is to make it so that no matter what platform you're building for, your apps can be social," he said.

Zuckerberg again denied rumors that the company is building its own "Facebook phone" to directly compete with handsets from Apple, Google or other mobile players. Bloomberg reported in September that Facebook was working with London-based manufacturer INQ Mobile Ltd. on a pair of smartphones that would be carried by AT&T.

Even without its own branded device, however, Facebook is clearly taking steps to extend its social media dominance on the PC to the mobile realm, where its user base across its mobile site and apps has more than tripled from about 65 million a year ago. "This gives us a good base for developers to build social apps on top of," said Zuckerberg.

In that vein, the single sign-on is designed to make it faster and easier for people to open third-party mobile apps while logged onto Facebook. Once a user logs into Facebook, they can simply log into other apps that support single sign-on without having to type a user name or password. Starting today, that will work with Android apps from Flixster, Groupon, Loopt, SCVNGR, Yelp and Zynga Poker.

Erick Tseng, who joined Facebook in May as lead product manager from Google, pointed out that entering log-in information in mobile can be especially challenging and annoying. "The more friction added into the log-in experience, the more users will vote with their fingers and not log in at all," he said.

By opening up a new set of APIs, Facebook is also making it possible for developers to see where your friends are and show location Places check-ins within their own social apps. So someone checking into the Yelp app will be able to see check-ins from all the different social location services on the Facebook Places feed. In addition to Yelp, Loopt is another initial partner that is using the Facebook API that lets developers add Facebook Places check-ins to apps.

Through the Deals feature in the Facebook iPhone app, people will be able to find special offers and discounts from nearby businesses from restaurants and major retailers. Deals are indicated by a yellow icon next to the name of a business. After tapping the listing, a user can view the offer and check in to claim it before redeeming it by showing their phone to a cashier.

Deals offered at launch include The Gap giving away jeans to the first 10,000 customers who claim their deal, JCPenney giving $10 off any $50 purchase and McDonald's donating $1 per customer to the Ronald McDonald House Charities. Other major brands on board with deals include American Eagle Outfitters, H&M and Chipotle.

Facebook is opening up deals to 20,000 businesses to start before making the program more widely available in the next few months. "The new deals service puts Facebook in even further competition with predecessors like Foursquare and Gowalla, which have offered similar coupons for months," according to the Inside Facebook blog.

Facebook itself will not take a cut of deal purchases, according to Zuckerberg, but will benefit through wider overall use of the social network by adding new services. He said businesses would be able to advertise deals as they do anything else, indicating an eventual ad revenue stream.

Facebook, which has been no stranger to privacy problems, was asked during a Q&A session about ensuring users' privacy now that it's sharing Places location data with outside developers. "Everything you saw here today was absolutely no different than how we're handling privacy and user data from what we announced back in August for the Places launch itself," said Tseng. "We have a very clear privacy management console...so that you can turn off any location participation at all."

Zuckerberg added that the single sign-on will only allow access to public Facebook information and that apps will still have to ask permission for access to location information. He declined to provide details on the uptake of Places since launch, but said the company was pleased with adoption to date and was pushing ahead with its rollout globally.

Separately, Facebook this week told lawmakers it has taken steps to prevent share of user data, including suspending certain applications from its site, after The Wall Street Journal reported some apps were sending user ID numbers to marketers in violation of Facebook's policies.

Before today's announcements, there had been speculation that Facebook might introduce an iPad app. But Zuckerberg shut down that idea when asked by stating: "The iPad is not a mobile device. Next question." He argued that the iPad was closer to a computer than a phone, so wouldn't fit as easily into the mobile category -- a view that Apple would likely dispute.

Forrester analyst Augie Ray said the most immediate impact of Facebook's new mobile efforts would be to increase interest in Facebook Places among both businesses and consumers. "Facebook's announcement of their mobile deal platform is a game changer, encouraging the adoption of check-in activities among people who previously saw no reason to do so," he noted in a blog post Wednesday.

He added that over time, businesses will increasingly compete to advertise their offers on Facebook, "which is how Facebook can eventually turn consumer check-ins and local ads into a new revenue stream."