Seriously.  However, I guarantee there are several people out there who will just have to be first in line to get one.

Lets examine my current situation – I do, in fact, own a smartphone.  It is the HTC Thunderbolt, a 4G LTE smartphone I bought for myself while Verizon was running the promotion giving 4GB for the price of 2GB.  It works perfectly fine, though at times the battery does leave a bit to be desired.  I have to charge it every night, and that is the only problem I have with it.  I’d say the only reason I’d consider an upgrade at this time in my life is for better battery life, as it was great when I had a “dumb”phone that could go 5 days without charging.

But in the news yet again is the Facebook smartphone.  Like I said, many people will just have to get it, but my response to the news articles is a resounding, “Meh.”  The only real difference I can see with this phone is who the ad money will be going to.  “What!?  What does that have to do with it!?”

Lets examine what’s going on when you have a smartphone with a data plan.  You now have the internet in your pocket and you’ll often use it to look up movie times, find a place to eat, do some online shopping, etc.  Well, every time you do something like that, some data is being collected on your tastes.  This data goes to a company and they learn what kind of advertisements you would look at.  A lot of phones out there today are iPhones and Androids, so this data goes to Apple and Google, and companies pay money to use this data to target people.  As I alluded to above, the only real difference I see with the Facebook phone would be that the data would be going to/coming from my Facebook ad profile.

In the initial public offering (IPO) for Facebook, the company showed its concern that it currently does not get any money from mobile users unless they log in from a non-mobile device (their activity, such as liking pages, still affects their ad profile).  Their mobile apps don’t show ads to users.  However, if Facebook has its own smartphone, now the Facebook profile gets used for the ad profile, so now Facebook gets money from mobile users.  Problem solved for Facebook, but what does this solve for me?  Absolutely nothing.

Rest assured I will not be standing in line to get this phone.  Unless it has a week-long battery…