MobileBeat 2010: Facebook’s Erick Tseng defines where “mobile” meets “social”

We’re delighted to announce Facebook’s new head of mobile products, Erick Tseng, as a speaker for our fireside chat at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2010 conference in San Francisco next month.

MobileBeat 2010 will focus on the superphone revolution and who is profiting from it. Facebook lies at the heart of this debate, because the social network has produced one of the most popular applications on next-generation smartphones.

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The company’s recent f8 conference for developers created a lot of buzz, because Facebook is pushing sharing features into the Web in ways that could revolutionize everything from search to news. But perhaps one of the biggest implications left out of that discussion is mobile, and how Facebook intends to bring social activity to the screens in our pockets.

Erick Tseng, who until earlier this year led the overall development of Android’s Nexus One phone for Google, left the search giant in May to join Facebook, where he is the company’s new head of mobile products. In his first public appearance at MobileBeat, he will engage in a fireside chat about Facebook’ role at the “intersect of mobile and social.”

We have a lot of questions for Tseng. The biggest announcement at Facebook’s f8 developers’ conference was the company’s redesign of its Graph API. Developers not only can now access information about a user’s social connections, but they can also see and access their interests. Facebook called this innovation the “Open Graph protocol.”  This presents new opportunities for mobile developers building social experiences on mobile devices.

But a conundrum for developers is that viral strategies in mobile don’t work as well as they do on the PC web. Here’s why. Imagine the most exciting mobile service or application in the world, one so compelling that it inspires the average user to share it to 25 other friends. In mobile, the viral effect will most likely fail. In fact, it may reach only one user. Dan Shapiro, former CEO of photosharing startup Ontela explained in a controversial article:

Only 35 percent of those people have a data plan. The rest of them are immune. Actually, make that a few problems: 20 percent of those people don’t have SMS enabled and can’t receive your “You should try this” message. 30 percent are on a carrier that only allows certified, paid applications which it deploys on its own deck. 1 percent, on average, have an iPhone. A typical application available on all US carriers and 4 smartphone platforms is facing a market with 95 percent immunity. iPhone apps are looking at 99.8 percent.

This failed viral mechanism in mobile is one of the reasons why mobile social networks have been slow to grow. Meanwhle, mobile advertising networks like AdMob have been able to benefit from this problem. One of the industry’s secrets is that before the iPhone days, the largest chunk of revenue for mobile advertising networks came from startups that wanted to acquire users.

In theory, Facebook’s Open Graph protocol could change the viral game in mobile. Recently, location-based service Loopt became the first mobile application to take advantage of this innovation. The company announced the introduction of Loopt Star, a mobile rewards game giving consumers coupons, full-track downloads and related perks for checking in at real-world destinations. For the game, the company scrapped its own proprietary sign-in process and used the Facebook Open Graph protocol.

The result is dramatic, from a mobile industry perspective. Before this innovation, a user checking in for the first time into a new app would have found very few users or friends on the new app. Now the user instantly sees all his Facebook friends connected to the new game.

Additionally, an application like Loopt Star can take advantage of Facebook’s Open Graph to provide users with a personalized experience. The game pits users against their friends to gain achievements, discounts and other brand-specified rewards for checking in at specific locations–participating retailers and restaurants can offer prizes for specific user actions like checking in a given number of times, or visiting with a specified number of Facebook friends.

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Will Facebook’s Platform be the new social powerhouse in mobile? Is this the beginning of a revolution for mobile publishers? Where else will Facebook be playing in mobile? Find out firsthand from one of Facebook’s smartest mobile thinkers at MobileBeat 2010.

For all conference details, go here.  To register, go here.

*We also want to thank the mobile industry leaders that are supporting MobileBeat 2010, including GetJar, Placecast, Greystripe, Qualcomm, and Microsoft as Gold Sponsors, AdMob, OpenMarket, Navteq, and MasterImage 3D as Silver Sponsors, and Nexage, Offerpal, Marvell, and Verizon as Event Sponsors.