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"Eighteen months ago, Mark Zuckerberg was not happy with Facebook's mobile strategy. The world's largest social network was offering up a weak product \u2014 a hybrid app running on HTML5 instead of native apps for iOS and Android \u2014 essentially ignoring the platform (mobile) that it now deems most important. A change needed to be made, and Zuckerberg now openly admits it. \n\"We took a bad bet,\" the Facebook CEO said during last week's TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco. \"Our legacy as a company was building this big website and focusing on being able to develop for the web. So naturally we tried to look at things and see if we could build an HTML5 system for across these different platforms and we just realized pretty quickly that we weren't going to get the quality level that we needed. \n\"So we took a year and it was painful and we retooled that.\"\nSee also: 20 Things Your Most Annoying Friends Do on Facebook\nMobile has become the company's most important focus, the platform that it will use to sign up the site's next billion users. (And probably the billion after that, too.) Since launching native iOS and Android apps last fall, Facebook has taken a mobile first approach both publicly and internally. \nThe part of the company that was once a black eye is now the center of attention as Facebook advances on its quest to get the entire world not only onto the Internet, but onto the platform. \u201CIf you rewind like two years ago, everyone was, like, \u2018mobile is coming, mobile is coming, mobile is coming,'\" said Mike Vernal, Facebook's director of engineering. \"For Facebook and specifically our developers, for the past year-plus we\u2019ve just been focused on, \u2018Ok, it\u2019s just about mobile, how can we help mobile developers?'\" \nIt's no secret that mobile users are important to the company. Of the 699 million daily active users who logged onto the site in June, more than two-thirds did so from a mobile device. Mobile ads (which didn't even exist a year ago) made up 41% of the company's total ad revenue in Q2, more than $655 million. Mobile users spend one in every five minutes online using Facebook; web users spend one in every seven minutes, Zuckerberg said.  \n\u00A0Graph: Facebook Q2 Earnings Report\nWith such a major part of the company reliant on mobile, it's interesting to think how little attention was spent on building a great mobile offering even 18 months ago. Facebook had fewer than 20 people on their core mobile team in early 2012, and changes to the mobile app came every three to six months \u2014 compared to the desktop version, which was updated twice per day, said Cory Ondrejka, Facebook's VP of mobile engineering. \nChanges to the social network were built for the web, and the Facebook mobile team was responsible for identifying the changes, and then finding a way to implement them into the app. Among the major issues with the company's hybrid app was its speed and stability (it was slow and often crashed, Ondrejka said). With a company full of web developers, building for web first was the natural order of things even if Facebook wanted to portray itself as a mobile-focused company. \"They had a rough time 18 months ago,\" said Brian Blau, research director for consumer technology at research firm Gartner. \"What they said they were doing [on mobile] and what they were actually doing was two different things.\"\n\"Since then, I think that they've really turned a corner.\"\nWhen Facebook decided to revamp its mobile approach last summer, Zuckerberg refocused the company, giving each team mobile engineers and developers so that updates and new features could be built with the mobile experience in mind. \"[Mark] said, 'You know, we need to think about maybe putting mobile first and being a mobile-first company,'\" Facebook Vice President of Business and Marketing Partnerships David Fischer told Fortune's Adam Lashinsky in February. \"We realigned the company around, so everybody was responsible for mobile.\" \nFacebook has since put hundreds of engineers through week-long iOS and Android classes on campus, Ondrejka said, and updates to the native apps come each month instead of three to four times a year. \nFacebook has also unveiled a number of core features on mobile first, including the News Feed's major redesign that came to the web in March, and Chat Heads, a feature taken from Facebook Home that has since been rolled out on the web. Last week's announcement that Facebook videos will now autoplay on mobile devices is leading many to believe that mobile video ads are coming soon, too. \nFeatures are rolled out on web or mobile depending on the use case, Ondrejka said. For example, the ability to add photos to Facebook comments is a mobile feature because it makes more sense that people would snap candid photos while on their phones, not while behind a desktop screen. \nThis company-wide transition doesn't mean that Facebook's mobile strategy is perfect. The social network's biggest feature of the year, Graph Search, still isn't on mobile even though it was announced in January, and Facebook's home screen software, Home, has been deemed a relative flop. (The first phone to ship with Facebook Home pre-installed, the HTC First, was reportedly discontinued by AT&amp;T this summer, but an HTC spokesperson says the phone is still available.) \"Facebook Home has been an abysmal failure,\" Blau said. \"Maybe they had some really great ideas there, but they just didn't deliver it in the right package or the right way.\" \nHome provides an example of how Facebook's company strategy \u2014 \"Move fast and break things\" \u2014 doesn't always work out. (Zuckerberg even admits that moving fast gets Facebook \"into tons of trouble.\") Facebook is a company that likes to take risks, Blau said, but if done too regularly or without proper payoffs, flounders like Home could create trust problems with users. \n\"Having that innovative strategy isn't a bad thing,\" he said. \"I think it's just how you go about managing it. That's the real key here. And that's probably what they can improve upon.\" \nFacebook is hoping to revitalize Home, which is only available to Android users, by bringing other social content, including Instagram alerts, to users' home screens in the near future, Zuckerberg said last week. \nSee also: Facebook: Here's How Your News Feed Works\nSo what's the next phase of Facebook's mobile march? For starters, building a mobile app to accommodate the site's next billion users will require more creativity in terms of development. In a white paper released Monday about the company's newest philanthropic venture, Internet.org, Facebook outlined the need for Internet companies to become more efficient in delivering data and building mobile apps that use less data and power. Facebook already has a data-friendly app known as Facebook for Every Phone, and it has more than 100 million users, according to the white paper. \nFacebook is putting significant time into research for the company's future mobile offerings. The social network recently sent a team of employees to the Philippines to get a first-hand look at how the app is being used abroad. In one research exercise, each team member was sent into a local marketplace with less than $50 to purchase the best phone they could find for the money. The hope is to better understand what types of devices people are using to visit Facebook, says Ondrejka. \nFacebook has since completed similar exercises in Africa, and will most likely do something similar in Latin America, according to a company spokesperson. \nAround Facebook's Menlo Park campus, engineers test and build updates on old versions of Android to simulate how the app will work in areas where cell technology is lagging behind. \n\u00A0Facebook's new iOS 7 app launched on Wednesday.\nFacebook has spent the last year and a half working to redefine the way people think about its product. The new approach has worked for stockholders. A year ago, Facebook's stock price ($FB) was hovering around $22 per share. As of Thursday, it was creeping up on $46. \nDesktop won't go away \u2014 it's too important to how the company scales. But mobile is how Facebook hopes to continue its growth over the next decade, and true to Facebook form, the company isn't advancing timidly. \"We've focused on doing what we think are the right things,\" Zuckerberg said at TechCrunch Disrupt. \"We're growing, we're connecting more folks, people are engaging more, sharing more content. [It's] all the stuff that we come in and get excited about every day.\" \nWhat do you think about Facebook's mobile offerings? Tell us in the comments below.\n\n\nThe Evolution of Facebook Mobile \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n1. Facebook Joins the Mobile Web\n\nIn 2007, Facebook announced on its blog that mobile site m.facebook.com was now available. It promised users \u201Cservices available for every Facebook user with a phone.\u201D \nThe mobile website let users surf Facebook on a website optimized for small screens, upload photos and notes to Facebook, and send and receive Facebook messages, wall posts and pokes using SMS. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2. Smartphone, Smart Facebook\nIn August 2007, just two months after the original iPhone\u2019s release, Facebook launched iphone.facebook.com, which allowed iPhone users to use a site optimized for the large touchscreen. Eventually, once more smartphone brands entered the market, Facebook renamed the site x.facebook.com\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n3. Comments Galore\nIt wasn\u2019t until late 2008 that users could actually use the mobile website to comment on their friends\u2019 status updates. The service was so popular that nearly a million mobile comments were posted in the first 24 hours after the update's release. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n4. The Original \"Facebook Phone\"\n\nAlso in 2008, INQ released the first \u201CFacebook Phone.\u201D The INQ1 was an entry level smartphone with strong Facebook integration. However, the phone was never officially endorsed by Facebook. \nImage: INQ\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n5. 100 Million Strong\nBy 2009, Facebook Mobile apps were available from Apple, Nokia, INQ, HTC, LG Electronics, Motorola, Palm, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, T-Mobile Sidekick and Windows Mobile. Those users whose phones didn\u2019t support one of those apps could still log in to the mobile website. And they did. With more than 100 million logging in to Facebook Mobile every month by February 2010, the company knew it had to create a more robust mobile presence. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n6. The Original Facebook App\n\nIn 2010, Facebook released the original web-centric mobile app. While other companies were releasing native versions of apps suited to Apple, Android, Nokia and Blackberry phones, Facebook gambled on the idea that, eventually, the operating systems currently vying for power would be overturned by a straight web-based experience. So it created the app to work on any platform. \nFacebook was wrong. Zuckerberg told Fortune, \"It was probably one of the biggest mistakes we've ever made.\" The app was was buggy and slow, garnering one-star ratings in the App Store and crashing more often than it worked. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n7. Facebook for \"Dummies\" \nFacebook continued to support feature phones (aka \u201Cdumbphones\u201D) by creating an app that worked on more than 2,500 devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG and other manufacturers. The app launched in January 2011 as part of the company's \"Facebook for Every Phone\" initiative, an ongoing project for the company.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n8. A Poor Compromise\n\nAs Android and iOS emerged as the top contenders in mobile operating systems, Facebook rethought its mobile strategy, creating versions of the app for each OS. But the apps they created still weren\u2019t specific to each operating system. \nInstead, it reached a hybrid: Native coding served as a sort of picture frame for the mobile-web language. The app \u201Cworked\u201D on both systems, but it wasn\u2019t optimized for either. Zuckerberg\u2019s universal app was a one-size-fits-all nightmare. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n9. \"Not Making a Phone\"\n\nDespite continued rumors that Facebook was making a handset, Zuckerburg and co. adamantly denied the existence of \"Facebook hardware.\" \nIn February 2011, INQ released the INQ Cloud Touch, a touchscreen smartphone with even more Facebook integration. Again, the phone was never officially supported by Facebook. \nImage: INQ\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n10. HTC Status\n\nGiving the Cloud Touch some competition, HTC released the HTC Status, a smartphone with a qwerty keyboard and a Facebook button that quickly connected users to the social network. \nImage: HTC\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n11. Facebook for iPad\nFacebook released the iPad version of the app in October 2011. It followed the same basic format as the smartphone apps but made photos larger and easier to swipe through. The smartphone versions also received minor updates, including the ability to share statuses, photos and Pokes.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n12. Speaking the Native Language\nIn 2012, after retooling the entire company toward mobile-first, Facebook released a new, fully native iPhone app. Reported to be twice as fast, the app was a welcome change, especially considering Facebook had spent years building the relationship. Despite the rigidity of the Apple platform, Facebook had already managed to infiltrate areas of the cellphone outside the app, such as an integrated contact list. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n13. Facebook's \"New Home on Android\" \n\nIn April 2013, Facebook hosted an event to reveal \"Facebook's new home on Android,\" Facebook Home. \nMore than an app but less than a phone, Facebook Home redesigned the more flexible Android operating system to revolve around the user's social media presence. A simplified home screen that displays the user\u2019s profile picture, News Feed and Chatheads (small bubbles displaying friends' profile pictures).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n14. Chatheads\n\nWhile Facebook Home has yet to expand into the more rigid iOS platform, the Chatheads feature made its way into Facebook's iOS app, though unlike Android, the user must be in-app to use the tool. \nWhile Home has met mixed responses, users have embraced Chatheads as a fun mobile addition.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n15. Paper\nFacebook announced its standalone news reader app, Paper, at the end of January 2014. The app curates Facebook content across various topic sections, such as Tech, Sports, Cute and LOL, as well as your own News Feed. The app took 30 months to build.\n\nImage: Facebook\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n16. Facebook Messenger Split\n\nIn April 2014, Facebook announced its Messenger app would be the only way to chat on mobile, eliminating chat features from the traditional iOS and Android apps.\nUsers were largely unhappy with the split, but Facebook Messenger became the No. 1 app in the App Store (albeit with a one-star rating). By November 2014, it had 500 million monthly active users.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nImage: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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