Facebook has upgraded its mobile site to deliver a unified experience across all platforms ? for both smartphones and feature phones.

The company announced the new upgrade via its blog and said that it wants to deliver the best possible mobile Web experience no matter what device users are using. Previously, Facebook built multiple versions of its mobile site, where feature phones device users had to enter m.facebook.com on their mobile browser and smartphone users had to enter touch.facebook.com for touch devices.

?Facebook is utilized more from mobile phones than it is from the PC,? said Marci Troutman, founder of Siteminis, Atlanta.

?A large percentage of Facebook users are students without a smartphone and this enables them to capture and retain a larger market of students that can upload pictures, share data and news and join groups all day versus just when they are back in front of their PCs, which is becoming less and less,? she said.

?It also allows Facebook to reach the global market so much more effectively, based on the 75 percent of feature phone users in the global market. There are more users on Facebook outside the U.S. than in the U.S.?

Facebook did not respond to press inquiries.

Ms. Troutman has no affiliation with Facebook. She commented based on her expertise in the industry. 

Facebook me
Facebook decided to upgrade its mobile site to a unified experience because the company saw two major problems with its initial multiple versions approach.

According to the blog post by Lee Byron, product designer at Facebook, Palo Alto, CA, the company could not use JavaScript and had device specific file size limitations on m.facebook.com

Additionally, supporting the different types of smartphones limited Facebook?s ability to use modern CSS and JavaScript APIs.

Another hurdle was building new features multiple times across different code bases whenever the company rolled out a new enhancement. It had to be done for the company?s Web site, m.facebook.com, touch.facebook.com and within its native applications.

According to Mr. Byron, the company was not very good at doing that and in the end, certain features were missing on different devices.

However, with the new unified mobile Web experience, users who have either smartphones or feature phones will see a rich interface on their mobile device.

?From the 2010 Gartner report on sales of total phones sold, there is still a 75 percent market of feature phone users in the global market ? the share in the U.S. is still at 50 percent,? Ms. Troutman said. ?With this in mind, the question is 'how many of your customers do you want to reach on mobile?' 

?If your mobile strategy is just aimed toward smartphone users, as you can see, there is a large percentage of customers you're missing,? she said.

?For example, if an ad email is sent to a feature phone user and then clicked through to the mobile Web, the opportunity is missed if the option to view doesn't come through properly, is too long of a load time or is in a non-functional mobile format.?

Overcoming hurdles
Now, with the new upgrade, every device uses the same framework.

Facebook can launch new features just once for every mobile device instead of doing it individually like it did in the pass.

Additionally, the new enhancements mean that everyone has access to the same features and there will no longer be a difference between m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com.

According to Mr. Byron, the new site is powered by a user interface framework based on XHP, Javelin and WURFL ? a detailed database mapping user agents to device capabilities.

In addition, the mobile user interface framework lets engineers focus on building their product rather than directly writing HTML, CSS and Javascript.

?Brands should develop a robust mobile Web site that works on all Web-enabled phones,? said Jason Taylor, vice president of platform strategy at Usablenet, New York.

?A successful mobile experience is one that works for everyone, no matter what phone they use to prevent losing any potential traffic or, in the case of retail, sales,? he said.

Final Take
Rimma Kats is staff reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York