Facebook adds Pages and Checkins to feature phone app

When you’re developing a campaign on Facebook, it’s easy to forget that a significant portion of your audience may not be able to access what you’re doing on their mobiles, if they’re accessing from a feature phone and not a smartphone. As Facebook continues their mobile development juggernaut, they’ve made a recent announcement that’s good news for brands worldwide.

Their ‘Facebook for Every Phone’ app, which is available on feature phones that run Java, enables those that don’t have smartphones to get a better mobile experience on Facebook. Now users can do even more through the app, which will benefit brands. It also comes following news that Facebook added support for three new languages within the app, in recognition of the markets that are more likely to access the internet via a feature phone: Hindi, Vietnamese and Malay.

View Facebook Pages

Previously, users of ‘Facebook for Every Phone’ weren’t able to interact with brands through pages, which has put up a huge barrier for companies trying to reach users on the go. Now through the app, users will be able to view and like Facebook pages, which will also bring page updates into the main news feed for users. You still won’t be able to view tabs or apps off a brand page, but it enables brands to reach consumers through updates and start conversations:

Location Check-in

As well as being able to view business pages, another brand activation point has been added with the ability for feature phone users to check-in to locations. This was recently announced on the Facebook for Every Phone page:

This is a particularly useful update for brands that might target a younger audience on Facebook who may not yet have graduated onto a smartphone, as it enables another communication point and a way to increase interaction through Facebook on the go. Though Facebook’s stats don’t currently highlight what percentage of users access the site via a feature phone, given that they now have 425 million monthly active users on mobile (as of December 2011), this is a significant audience to consider.