Facebook went live with the media this morning from their Palo Alto headquarters to make good on Mark Zuckerberg’s promise last week that his company would be making some “awesome” announcements. Though Skype-integrated video chat looks cool, iDB feels that the best has yet to come.
Remember that little Facebook endeavor we told you about a few weeks ago code-named Project Spartan? The HTML5-coded platform is nearing completion and could be available to the masses as early as the end of the month…
TechCrunch was right on the money again with reports last night claiming that today’s announcement would have nothing to do with Project Spartan. Their sources confirmed that the platform is nearing completion though, and Spartan developers are being told to be ready to go by July 15.
While Facebook’s announcement today didn’t give us any information on the secret project, TechCrunch’s article spelled out some interesting details. The gadget blog has been dishing all kinds of dirt regarding the leading social networking site’s future plans, and they don’t appear to be out of material.
Previous reports suggested that Project Spartan was a plan to take on Apple, but TechCrunch’s sources paint a different picture this time:
“Facebook wants a cut of Apple’s mobile app market, and thats been clear this entire time. Perhaps it’s not war against Apple — maybe Apple is just going to ‘gift’ Facebook the share of their market (the HTML5 share) in exchange an alliance being formed whereby Apple gets some exclusive access to Facebook’s
600750 million-plus users and thereby cutting out Google (exclusive to some degree, Facebook is too open for it to be fully exclusive). In this theory, it’s not Facebook Spartans vs. Apple, it’s Facebook/Apple Spartans vs. Google.”
Access to exclusive Facebook content would give Apple another leg up in the social networking race, as its already deeply integrated Twitter into its next iOS. Not to mention, the super-sized HTML5-based platform will continue to push the web past Flash technology.
It’s also possible that Zuckerberg and company are looking to test the waters before producing their often-rumored Facebook phone. What better way to do that than on iOS? Regardless, it seems like things are about to get extremely interesting in the next few months. Stay tuned.
Thoughts?