Facebook featured on new iPhone ad

ads aren't playing.

Microsoft only has a 1.6% stake in Facebook. And it's not like you don't see Microsoft Office ads on Apple's website. Not that big of a deal.

interesting (since Bill Gates and Microsoft own part of facebook) that they chose this webapp to feature in the commercial

As a web designer and developer, I find iPhone and iPod optimised sites make a lot of sense. Not just for making best use of available screen space, but also because of the way you interact with the touch screen and because principal tasks you perform on the move aren't always the same as those you perform on your Mac/PC.

Development wise, it's also much easier to build web apps which intergrate seamlessly with other web services for the iPhone/iPod than with traditional WAP/WML services. My own web app, imageMailer integrates perfectly with Facebook photo albums (and pretty much any other web site) allowing iPhone and iPod users to share web images on the move. And because it's delivered with standard HTML/CSS, Mac and PC users can access it too - albeit without a cool phone/ipod ;)

http://www.apple.com/webapps/utilities/imagemailer.html

What's more, uniike applications which sit on the device itself, web apps can continually evolve and improve without users constantly needing to upgrade to the latest version. So, when you look closely, there's actually a lot of advantages to this approach which aren't immediately apparent and I think it's great to see Apple promoting this.

Sure, the SDK will deliver some great new software to iPhone and iPod users. But web apps will always have their place.

The ad is here:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad16/

Love the blog, love the posts, but I have to share that I find your linking standards to be rough. For instance when I saw this post the first thing I wanted to do was see the iphone ads, so I clicked on the word "iphone" and got the same post I'm already on!

I imagine you guys have some sort of guideline for this, since I get lost by this all the time, but you guys might want to think of doing some user testing. Go into a computer lab, and ask 5 strangers what they think all the links on any given post are for. I think you'll be shocked at how misunderstood they are. Then do the same thing at Slashdot (who does linking very well), and compare.

I know you get revenue from ads, so I guess it's possible that you guys intentionally create confusion to artificially increase your page views, in which case you can ignore this comment, since it would conflict with your revenue stream...

Can you please not link to tags? Its realy irritating to click on iPhone expecting to go to Apple's site and end up with more TUAW... Didn't one of the writers say they were trying to avoid doing this now?

now they just need flash to work on the iphone so I can play scrabulous on the go

I thought this commercial was eriely timed, not because of the recent updates or anything, but because I was reading a list of iPhone version websites when I lande don the facebook one and THAT SECOND the commercial chime din to tell me how great it was.

Now that's targetted marketing, folks.

Also, Joey makes a good point, it sort of defeats the purpose of having a full-fledged browser if you're using optimized pages, not to mention that these pages often display awkwardly on other mobile internet devices, which limits their usefulness to just the iPhone and Touch. If they were using the iPhone as an excuse to create mobile versions of their site it make more sense than making a limited version. Didn't they do the same thing when Palms started to go online, too?

I, looked up "Kevin Tenglin" on Facebook, and he only has 8 friends on Facebook, 5 of whom belong to the "TBWAChiatDay" network.

Looks like Apple's still using the same advertising agency 24 years after "1984".