More and more businesses are trying to get into mobile these days, and it looks like Facebook is no different. According to Facebook’s chef product officer, Chris Cox, The social media giant is trying to make a case to publishers that they can do a better job serving their content on mobile phones.
Cox spoke at length about their effort with Re/coed’s Peter Kafka in an hour-long interview Tuesday night at the Code/Media conference, which took place at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California.
“Reading news on a smartphone is still a really bad experience most of the time,” Cox said. “It’s slow, especially in the developing world, where it can take 30 or 45 seconds for a piece of content to load.
“We want to try and make that a better experience for publishers.”
So what does this mean exactly? At this point, the talks between Facebook and publishers are still in the early stages, and everything is still up in their air with how content would be displayed. Naturally, publishers were wary when first approached, because they were worried about giving up control of their content. But it seems that discussions have been positive so far.
Naturally, publishers might be afraid that Facebook would possibly make their websites obsolete one day, but Facebook’s intention is to provide them with better publishing tools. Cox said that Facebook wants to be a partner, and not a conqueror.
“We don’t want to try and devour and suck in the Internet,” he said.
For more coverage of Cox’s interview, see Re/code’s live blog.