Facebook access now free to all du mobile subscribers



1330-du facebook-thumb-300x400.jpg

Facebook did a rather cool thing yesterday. The largest social networking website in the world announced that it made a version of itself available on any mobile device - accessible via

- completely for free.

That's right, free. Even if you have no data plan and just use your mobile device to make phone calls, you'll still be able to update your status, comment on your friends' activities and poke each other (viewing photos costs a little bit extra, depending on what operator you subscribe to).

In the UAE, Facebook partnered with du to provide its free service, the only operator in the Middle East that was part of the website's launch (Vodafone Qatar is said to be coming soon).

As Facebook puts it in a blog post, the service is part of a wide-ranging effort to ensure that it is available to every single person on this planet, especially those who do not have regular access to the internet.

Photo - Running free Facebook on a Sony Ericsson device. David George-Cosh / The National
Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley recently forecast that the two fastest growing areas of the technology industry are the mobile Internet and social services. At Facebook we're at the center of these two trends with more than 100 million people actively using Facebook from their mobile device and with more than 200 mobile operators in 80 countries offering and promoting Facebook Mobile.

So, what's in it for du? According to Saugat Chatterjee, a du spokesperson, the operator will gain from "data revenues when customer wants to engage more than what is possible from

0.facebook.com." It will also challenge those who have to type in everything on the mobile using that clunky three-character-a-key input, as I experienced first-hand while demoing the website on a friend's device.

Mr Chatterjee notes that the free Facebook website is not available if you are a BlackBerry user, use an Opera Mini mobile browser or if a subscriber roams outside the UAE. But apart from that, if you've got regular old du phone, go ahead and start poking each other.

And it sure seems to beat Etisalat's Dh49 per month

, dontcha think?


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