Facebook To 'Friend' With Nokia To Bring Social Network To Mobiles

Facebook is in discussions with Nokia on ways to integrate the wildly popular social network into mobile phones made by the Finnish giant, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The newspaper, citing "people familiar with the matter," said Palo Alto, California-based Facebook and Nokia were discussing a partnership that would embed parts of the social network into some Nokia phones.

The Journal said the talks have been going on for months. Financial terms of the potential deal could not be obtained, it said.

The newspaper said Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, was deciding whether it wanted to team up with an established Web player like Facebook or "build a social network from the ground up."

It said the two companies were looking at potentially integrating contact information stored in Facebook with a phone's address book.

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"When users looked up a contact, they could see whether their Facebook friends were logged on, send them messages and post comments on their profile pages," the Journal said.

Facebook is also working with US handset maker Palm on integrating aspects of the social network into its new mobile operating system, the Journal said, and has also held talks with another US mobile phone maker, Motorola.

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It quoted a Facebook spokeswoman as saying the company is "dedicated to working with and developing partnerships with mobile operators and device makers all over the world."

Facebook has already built software applications for Research in Motion's Blackberry and Apple's iPhone.

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According to Nielsen Co. figures cited by the Journal, Facebook in December surpassed rival MySpace in terms of the number of visitors from mobile phones - seven million US mobile users for Facebook compared with 5.7 million US mobile users for MySpace.

According to Internet tracking firm Compete.com, Facebook racked up nearly 1.2 billion visits in January while News Corp.-owned MySpace slipped to second place with approximately 810 million visits in January.

Source-AFP
SRM