Snaptu it, Facebook…

Snaptu it, Facebook…

Facebook is, frankly, enormous. Not just in a social networking sense, but also in a brand sense. A commercial sense and recognition sense. Over 30 million people in the United Kingdom currently possess a Facebook account, with that number steadily growing as time goes on.
While quite a lot of people access Facebook via their smartphone, there is still a huge number of people who log on through conventional handsets. Though the smartphone trend is ploughing ahead, a whopping 80 per cent of the global phone market is still taken up by ‘non-smartphones’.

In what many see as a clever move, Facebook has quickly moved to acquire London-based company Snaptu for a price estimated between $40-70 million. The American-Israeli technology firm’s expertise lie in making social networks and platforms accessible through ‘feature phones’. One of Facebook’s key goals for 2011 is to expand in the mobile market – the team at Snaptu seem happy with the acquisition, blogging: “We soon decided that working as part of the Facebook team offered the best opportunity to keep accelerating the pace of our product development.”
In the past, Facebook’s head of mobile business, Henri Moisinnac, has said: “We want to have every user in every market using Facebook– we’re investing in smartphones and at the same time as in mass market phones because we believe with great features and great integrations, every phone can become sociable.”
Mobile search is becoming incredibly important in the world of website optimization as companies look to harness searchers on the move. With 80 per cent of the global phone market being identified as ‘non-smartphone’, then Facebook are already laying down the foundations to try and corner as much of it as possible. Link building is very important when promoting your website, but keep in mind that a strong mobile presence will also be crucial in the coming years as the medium grows.