Facebook’s big secret: Project Spartan mobile app platform

Facebook announces a new product today, expected to be a fully integrated Facebook Skype video chat application, as we reported last week.  Revealing a Facebook iPad could also be on the agenda today.  But what about the mysterious and closely-guarded Project Spartan?

Project Spartan is Facebook’s work-in-progress, a mobile app platform built on HTML5 and designed to work with Safari and iOS, using Facebook Credits as its currency.  The third-party developers involved, nicknamed ‘Spartans’, have already been reprimanded by Facebook for leaking confidential project information to interested friends.  Some of the rumours include:

• Spartan will offer plenty of mobile gaming apps (with help from Zynga).
• The Huffington Post are among the news providers on board.
• App quality is surprisingly high.
• App quality is surprisingly low.
• It’ll be completed by mid-July.
• It’ll be launched by the start of August.

Meanwhile Facebook’s PR spin has been that Project Spartan’s purview is “nothing new”.  But a leaked [and edited to protect the source] screenshot reproduced on several tech blogs shows some very novel additions to a modified version of the existing Facebook mobile site design: Games and Apps!

The blue bar at the top, referred to as ‘chrome’ (yes, really) is wrapped onto the apps – which rest on third-party servers at present – to give a seamless Facebook mobile experience.  Apps and Games can send Facebook Notifications to users, encouraging ongoing engagement.  I’d say that’s new.

Knowing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘open’ and ‘sharing’ routine, no doubt Spartan will be presented as another open option, rather than as a rival to Apple’s App Store or the Android Marketplace.  But from out here, it looks like Facebook means to steal App Store customers away on Apple’s own devices.

Given the rumours of Apple involvement in the Facebook iPad application’s development, perhaps Apple and Facebook will agree a ‘fair’ exchange of app market share, user data, and cross-marketing.  Certainly that would bolster both companies against mutual competitor Google.  Or maybe Apple sees this as a way to sweep Flash from their path by increasing HTML5 dependence.

Facebook has its fingers in a lot of pies right now.  The product to be announced today was created by Facebook’s Seattle, team, not the Spartans.  We’ll soon know what today’s special will be, but smartphone owners may stay hungry for another month.

Source: TechCrunch

Visit Front Side Bus for the latest in gadgets, technology and science.

Read more at Frontsidebus