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Facebook's focus is on mobile, says COO Sheryl Sandberg

As mobile users overtake desktop users, Facebook is increasingly zeroed in on mobile strategy, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said this week. 

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Reuters
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, pictured here in a file photo, said this week that Facebook was increasingly focused on mobile strategy.
  • By Matthew Shaer

Earlier this year, Facebook announced that for the first time, the number of mobile users exceeded the number of desktop users. No huge surprise there: More and more of us use our smart phones and tablets as one of our primary portals to the Internet (see also yesterday's IDC report, which forecasted a drastic widening of the tablet market in the years ahead, and a concurrent shrinking of the PC market). 

The big question was what Facebook was going to do to leverage all that mobile growth. Well, this week, at the All Things D conference out in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Facebook COO Sheryl offered an answer of sorts: Shift resources from desktop development to the mobile side of things. "Mobile is the top goal right now," Ms. Sandberg said, according to MarketWatch. "Every product team is focused on mobile."

Meanwhile, she continued, Facebook would work on more tightly focusing advertisements on individual users. "The growth you’ll see from us on mobile is less about inserting more ads and more about inserting better ads," she said.

Already, this strategy seems to be working. As Raj Aggarwal, CEO of app analytics firm Localytics, told USA Today earlier this month, advertisers are flocking to Facebook's mobile app in droves. "For brands seeking to cost-effectively reach a highly engaged mobile audience, app marketing through Facebook is a must," Mr. Aggarwal said. 

In related news, at the same All Things D conference, Sandberg played down reports of discontent among users of Facebook Home, a new suite of Android apps. She pointed out that Home users actually spend 25 percent more time on Facebook than the average user and send 10 percent more messages.

"Facebook home is version one of a very large transformation," she said.

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.

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