Facebook’s mobile updates: nice, but hardly amazing

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At its event in its Palo Alto headquarters on Wednesday, Facebook failed to shock and awe the world with news of anything really groundbreaking, instead sticking to incremental upgrades to its mobile apps, the predictable launch of Facebook Deals, the opening of its location based APIs and single sign on mobile login.

Beforehand, of course, the rumor mill had been hard at work, churning out all kinds of far fetched but exciting stories about a Facebook phone (Zuckerberg categorically denies this will ever happen), VoIP calling over Facebook (although so far even the Skype partnership doesn’t seem so impressive), and friendship recommendations based on mutual “likes.”
None of the aforementioned happened yesterday, and it seems that despite Facebook’s meteoric rise to reaching 200 million mobile users, the social network’s team is still taking it slow when it comes to mobile innovation.

Not that anyone was complaining about the 10,000 pairs of blue jeans GAP was giving away to those who checked in to their stores using the new Facebook Deals/Places app. Nor was anyone complaining about the NorthFace donating a dollar to charity every time someone checked into their stores or any US national park using the system. Or being able to tag one’s friends for some free pie. No, it was all cute, feel-good and Facebook-y, but still a bit disappointing in the ‘Really? That’s it?’ kind of way.

Single sign on (SSO) – the hassle-free way to log in to mobile applications – was ironically the single best thing to come out of the entire announcement, allowing users to log into other apps using their Facebook login. Groupon announced itself a partner of SSO, as did Loopt, SCVNGR, Yelp, Flixster and Zynga Poker.

Another nice but not exactly revolutionary touch was the ability to add photos to a post when users check in somewhere on places, something SCVNGR has had for a while. Facebook also updated Places to include a starred friends list, “making it even faster and easier to tag friends with whom you frequently check-in,” and eliminating all that annoying searching and scrolling.

Minor updates, major disappointment, still, at least Facebook is building up its mobile lego blocks slowly and carefully and building a solid foundation for what we can only hope will be a much more innovative future.
You can read live tweets from yesterday’s event here