This photo provided by Facebook shows a screenshot from its newest mobile application which launched on Thursday, Aug. 23, 2012. Facebook says rather than adding a slew of new features, the company rebuilt the application from scratch to make it speedier and less clunky. (AP Photo/Facebook)
MENLO PARK -- What's the worst insult you can throw at a fast-moving company like Facebook? Call its iPhone app slow and poky.
On Thursday, Facebook addressed users who had gripes with its app for iPhones and iPads with the launch of a faster version. Rather than add a slew of new features, the company said it rebuilt the application from scratch to make it speedier and less clunky.
In a recent demonstration at the company's Menlo Park, headquarters, the new iPhone app opened about twice as fast as the older version. Photos and comments also load faster. Users can now "like" comments on photos, which wasn't possible with the previous mobile app.
Mick Johnson, mobile product manager at Facebook, said programmers removed some lesser-used features, such as a way to view the app horizontally, to help speed it up.
The mobile arena presents Facebook with its biggest challenge -- and its biggest opportunity. That's where its user base is growing the most. At the end of June, Facebook had 543 million users who accessed it with a phone or tablet computer, up 67 percent from 325 million a year earlier. Its overall user base grew 29 percent over the same time period, to 955 million.
But while Facebook ads are well-established on its website, the company only recently started experimenting with mobile advertisements. That's been a concern for investors, who've
sent Facebook's stock down by nearly half since the company's initial public offering three months ago.The iPad version of the new app now features Timeline, the latest version of the profile page that Facebook is rolling out to all of its users.
The app is available for free from Apple's (AAPL) App Store.
The apps are part of what Facebook executives say is a transformation into a "mobile-first" company. Developing mobile products has been made a priority, they said in recent interviews, and every team inside the organization has been rewired with the goal of inserting mobile into its DNA.
"We have basically retooled and focused the company around mobile," said Mike Schroepfer, vice president for engineering of Facebook. "It's been a huge change."
As part of the reformation, product teams have been arranged so that they now make mobile versions of new features at the same time that they are developed for the main website. Before, the company would make new features for the website, then a core mobile team would quickly follow up with translations for mobile devices.
Facebook is also trying to spread mobile expertise throughout the company. Its top engineers hold training sessions every week for 20 employees at a time, teaching them how to program for Apple and Android devices. About 100 engineers are now working on Facebook's mobile products, according to Cory Ondrejka, chief of mobile engineering.
With the training, the company expects to have created 200 new mobile engineers by the end of the year, Schroepfer said. Soon these classes will be open to any Facebook employee who wants to come, including people from marketing and design. Gokul Rajaram, product director of ads at Facebook, said the company's strategy would mostly focus on so-called sponsored stories, which treat posts from users as ads, amplifying word of mouth. For example, if a user clicked the "Like" button on the Facebook page of a certain band, some of his friends might see a notice about this when they visit the site. But if that band chose to sponsor that "Like," the notice would show up on most of the friends' news feeds, on both mobile devices and the website.
Facebook started using sponsored stories in February, and they now generate about $1 million of revenue a day, about half of which comes from mobile users, according to Rajaram.
A new ad method that Facebook is testing is called Offers, in which a company can post a hot offer on its Facebook page, like a discount for a restaurant. If someone claims this offer, a notice can show up in some friends' feeds; if the offer is sponsored, far more friends will see it.
Another piece of the strategy is the App Center, where people can find apps for Apple and Android devices that have Facebook tie-ins. One goal of this effort is to turn the App Center into the go-to place for people to discover apps, which could entice app developers to advertise on Facebook, according to Doug Purdy, the company's director of developer products.
Melissa Parrish, a Forrester analyst who follows mobile marketing, said the problem for Facebook and any Web company moving into mobile was that people still thought mobile advertising just meant smaller ads, which is a problem because a smartphone is not just a tiny computer. She said Facebook's sponsored stories were a "baby step" in mobile innovation, and she would like to see the company take advantage of things like location data and the always-on connection of a smartphone.
The New York Times contributed to this report.
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