Remember that whole back-and-forth drama over HTC's possible Facebook phones? A couple of weeks ago I covered that mess in my Daily Axioms video post, promising to revisit the story if and when there are new developments.
Now that the Mobile World Congress I mentioned in the video post has kicked off, we have those developments. One of the early surprises from the first day of the MWC is a pair of smartphones from HTC. The phones (dubbed the ChaCha and Salsa...seriously, that's their names) don't boast a ton superior features, but they do have one especially interesting component: a dedicated Facebook button.
It's a compelling feature to add to the mid-range phones, but I'm surprised they didn't integrate the feature with their more powerful devices. Hopefully that won't affect the performance of the Facebook button, because I do think it could be useful for slower phones (i.e. mine) that make social sharing more difficult.
But there's a second component to this story, and this one comes straight from Mark Zuckerberg. When the rumors of a possible Facebook phone surfaced, Zuckerberg quickly dismissed them, saying very clearly that Facebook was not developing a phone. Now, a few weeks later, Zuckerberg claimed at the MWC that there will be "multiple" Facebook phones coming this year.
It's quite a turnaround from those earlier rumors, but it appears we can all expect to see more Facebook integration with mobile devices in 2011.
