Facebook’s Plan To Boost Mobile Internet Usage

Connecting 7 billion people via the Internet in a world where an estimated 1.4 billion people in developing countries live on $1.25 a day or less is seemingly impossible.

Of course, not even the CEO of a company who has taken a social media experiment created in a Harvard dorm room to 1.19 billion active users in 11 years could likely achieve such a feat. But that hasn’t stopped Mark Zuckerberg from dedicating Facebook’s attention (and money) toward Internet.org — the global partnership initiative run through Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

What Facebook and the other media giants are attempting to do through projects like Internet.org is bring affordable Internet to nations where it’s otherwise unobtainable. Facebook’s blog provided an update yesterday (July 26) about the progress of the initiative over the past 12 months.

That update of course has one word that sticks out to show how Facebook plans to scale its next steps: mobile.

Internet.org has brought more than 9 million people online over the past 12 months, and it’s done so across 17 developing countries that otherwise might not have the same lifeline to the rest of the world. Facebook’s plans now include offering free basic Internet service on mobile phones in those regions.

“This is really a customer acquisition tool for mobile operators where the benefit to them of offering a very light amount of free data is to bring on more paying subscribers to their networks,” Chris Daniels, VP of product for Internet.org, told Reuters in an interview.

In Facebook’s blog, the company provided a few key stats about how the initiative has taken scale and how it plans to scale it even further. According to Facebook, Internet.org “brings new users onto mobile networks on average over 50 percent faster after launching free basic services, and more than half of the people who come online through Internet.org are paying for data and accessing the Internet within the first 30 days.”

“These points show that Internet.org is not only a successful tool in helping bring people online, but it is successful in showing people the value of the Internet and helping to accelerate its adoption,” the post reads.

For the past five years, Facebook has also worked on its O.facebook.com initiative, which is a mobile site that enables users Internet access without the data charges. That’s just another way Facebook has attempted to connect more people to Facebook, more people to its social commerce ads and more people to the rest of the world.

The social network giant has only recently in the past year dabbled with the concept of how to monetize Facebook through commerce opportunities. Now, it’s looking to scale that concept globally. But first they need to connect consumers.

That’s where Internet.org has come into play.

“To serve the entire world, we need to build products that serve our community and allow people to share different types of content with different audiences,” Zuckerberg said in the company’s fourth quarter earnings call in January, when he gave more details about Internet.org. “We need to offer new services and infrastructure at greater scale, but we need to create new tools and innovate to solve fundamental challenges in the places we want to connect.”

Bringing people together through technology means expanding Facebook’s reach, which extends its social commerce opportunities by giving people the chance to buy through Facebook. Because mobile advertising is making up an increasing amount of Facebook’s revenue, increasing global connectivity through affordable (or free) mobile options is key — particularly in regions where smartphone usage trumps having a computer as a mode of communication. As research from IDC shows, smartphone usage in emerging markets will continue to rise as prices drop; that could be key for social commerce growth that relies on mobile usage.

Connecting more consumers to Facebook means more consumers connected to access points of commerce and now, with the mobile-enabled Internet.org underway, more people connected to mobile payments and mobile commerce.

“I do think that over the long term that focusing on the helping connect everyone will be a good business opportunity for us as well,” Facebook CFO Dave Wehner said in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, describing how Internet.org can benefit the company. “And we may not be able to tell you exactly how many years that’s going to happen in, but I think as these countries get more connected, the economics growth the ad markets growth, and Facebook and the other services in our community are the number one and number two, three, four, five services that people are using, then over time we will be compensated for some of the value that we have provided but this is why we are here. We are here because our mission is to connect the world and I just think it’s really important that investors know that.”

And that answer alone has explained why else it wants to propel missions like Internet.org (besides its civic duty as a massive social media network). What Facebook has been able to do is merge its responsibility as a global networking company with its business plans.

And now they’re helping connect those consumers via mobile.