Facebook May Tie-Up With Nokia. Does It Need To?

Facebook may be working with Nokia on a deal that gives the social net prominent placement on Nokia phones; the deal may also include an equity investment from the handset maker, says PaidContent.

Our question: Just how important is it to marry Web services/sites with carriers or handsets? We know that carrier/handset homepages -- "decks", in mobile parlance -- are incredibly valuable for purveyors of mobile content. If you want to sell a particular ringtone or videogame, you're going to have a hard time doing so unless you have that crucial real estate.

But we're not sure how much that matters with social networks like Facebook, which don't depend on the Web equivalent of impulse purchases. You go to Facebook because your friends are there, not because you can get there in one click from your mobile web browser.

As an aside, we have noticed that while we're increasingly less interested in using Facebook, we do find the site's Blackberry app very useful. It lets us use the site's most important function -- messaging -- without logging in, makes us much more likely to do so. But we're not using that app because RIMM installed it on our device. We went and got it ourselves. And our gut is that we'll do the same thing for any other mobile app that's that's useful.