Facebook Launches Mobile Friend Finder, Overtakes Mobile App

Below is a series of screenshots from within the Facebook iOS app that allows users to match their Facebook friends against their iPhone Contacts: "Find Friends on Facebook: Choose contacts on your phone to add as friends on Facebook." It's a basic concept - but it's tremendously powerful since your mobile contact list is really your tightest, most significant network.... and those users are surely also Facebook users. Of course Apple performs the matching by uploading contacts from the device and then sorting them on Facebook's servers. You may remember this practice was critiqued publicly - but Facebook is very clear about how they are using the contacts.

It is also worth noting that Facebook is clearly aware of the potential growth here (in one click I can add 1,109 new friends!) but wants to balance some quality control: "Please send invites only to friends who will be glad to get them."

Retailers' Surprisingly Good Mobile Experience - Rubio's Example

You probably don't think of Rubio's (the fish taco fast food chain) as a leader in web / mobile innovation... but the below example is well done and really should be more widely adopted. Background: after seeing someone drink from a Rubio's cup, I asked where the closest location was? Neither of us knew... so I went to www.rubios.com on my iPhone expecting to search their standard website for the "locations" page. Rather, they automatically detected that I was on a mobile device and prompted me to provide my location - which they then used to display the nearest Rubio's restaurants. Rubios is using Know-Where Systems to run the web application. While the experience is rather simplistic - you can imagine building a more robust one aimed at mobile users. Clearly location is a key lever there... but couponing, nutrition, hours, etc are all examples of content aimed specifically at mobile users.