Facebook f8 to skip Project Spartan, focus on music, video
updated 08:10 pm EDT, Mon September 19, 2011
Facebook Project Spartan said too broad for f8
A pair of tips may have spoiled what will and won't show at Facebook's f8 conference this Thursday. The social network has supposedly pushed back Project Spartan, its HTML5 mobile app project, after repeated delays. The plan once identified by TechCrunch as iPhone-only is now thought to have expanded to include Android and the desktop.
The company may look to a follow-up event a "week or two later," both to avoid f8 and Project Spartan undermining each other as well as to give more time for the presentations.
Instead, most of the focus will be on media sharing components. Going under the slogan "Read. Watch. Listen," it would include both the cross-pollinated music widely reported but also specific hooks for sharing articles and video. Corroborating sources for AllThingsD, couldn't identify the video sites, but reading would focus on big Internet publishers like Yahoo. YouTube is near certain to be exempt given a war in social between Google and Facebook.
The Read Watch Listen unveilings will mostly be about dragging more of the third-party Internet under Facebook and turning it into a home for media. Project Spartan was at first an attempt to do the same to Apple by pulling Zynga and other firms away from the App Store. An expansion to Android, however, would potentially help Apple by moving many Flash-based Facebook games over to real web standards, minimizing one of Android's ostensible advantages.
