Facebook on Tuesday afternoon introduced an app for mobile
phones that acts as a standalone group chat client for mobile operating
systems. The app, now live for download, expands the chat features in
Facebook's existing mobile app to include features like location-sharing,
mobile photo-sharing, and most importantly instant messaging to friends
or groups on Facebook. The app is already available for Android and Blackberry
phones along with the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad (although the app is not yet
optimized for the iPad's larger screen.)
Facebook purchased messaging firm Beluga back in March and
it seems that several Beluga team members have had a hand in the app's
creation. The timing of the release along with its features seems like a fairly
direct response to Google+ and its huddles feature that also lets you instantly
chat with friends. Facebook has repeatedly denied that the flurry of recent
announcements from the social networking giant and the company's chat releases,
like video calling in partnership with Skype, were a response to Google's new
social network, but the parallels are hard to ignore. With Google+ growing to
more than 25 million users in just a little over a month, it's hard to imagine
that Facebook isn't at least a little threatened.
Within a pod, users can send messages and share images and
locations, according to Beluga's website. The free application is available for
Apple's iPhone and Android-based smart phones.
For now, Beluga's application will continue to function as
it does today. Existing accounts and data will not be lost, the company writes.
Recently, Facebook has stepped up its smartphone push. The
company has, for example, worked with HTC and INQ on smartphones with tighter
Facebook integration. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent a video message to
HTC's news conference at the Mobile World Congress last month -- where it
launched the Salsa and the ChaCha -- to say users can expect many more phones
with much deeper integration with Facebook to arrive this year.Today, there are
more than 200 million active users accessing Facebook via their mobile devices.
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