Nokia is inhaling West Coast fumes if it really plans to invest in Facebook
By Stefan Constantinescu on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 12:33 AM PST In Nokia
Rumor on the street is that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is planning on investing in Facebook. Let me be the first to call complete and utter bullshit. Nokia bets long term and while Facebook may be the fad right now, there are plenty of people who rightly question their dominance in the long haul. According to paidcontent.org “a senior Nokia executive” has said:
“There is talk of a partnership in the works … it’s safe to say we’re testing the waters and things still have to be worked out.”
Now excuse me while I go have a wank, but if this is true then this is a side of Nokia I’m not familiar with. The Nokia I know would champion standards such as OpenID and OAuth so that the social network in vogue is irrelevant. The Nokia I know wouldn’t piggy back on someone else’s social network when instead they would create something where mobile phones talk to (transmit data) other mobile phones. Since Facebook has already planning on joined the dataportability group then why should Nokia have to invest in Facebook to get access to their data? Why hasn’t Nokia joined the dataportability group yet?
I don’t believe this story, mainly because my experience with Facebook has gone from magical back when it was only for college kids to out right worthless. Here is hoping this gut instinct is right.
The word partnership is always a vague one.
I believe Facebook ousted Flickr as the #1 photo sharing site… so in this vein, a “partnership” could be something like opening some api’s to Nokia for a seamless web upload feature, as in the Flickr uploader thingy on the N95.
I don’t see why Nokia can’t just do it without having to give Facebook a kickback. One can already send images straight to Facebook with their Nokia thanks to Widsets and Shozu.
This “partnership” would be a PR stunt if anything.