Facebook Will Be Baked Into Dozens Of Mobile Devices This Year

Late last year we broke the news about the upcoming Facebook Phone project, which sparked a media frenzy as the social network claimed this to be wrong, only to later admit that it did exist (the explanation being that there was no ‘Facebook Phone’, but that there are many Facebook Phones). Last week we got a video demo of one of these devices: the Android-based, INQ Cloud Touch. And today HTC announced its own Facebook-branded phones. But this is only the beginning.

Today Facebook announced on its blog that we’ll be seeing many similar integrations over the coming months:

In addition to these new phones from INQ and HTC, you’ll also be seeing similar deep Facebook integration on dozens of other devices over the course of this year. Some manufacturers will be highlighting Facebook as a part of their phones’ on-screen interfaces, and others will use our brand as an element of the device hardware itself.

The Facebook functionality on the INQ devices include single sign-on (you won’t have to keep reentering credentials for various applications, because it will use your Facebook account) and links to popular features like Chat and Places. The HTC devices actually have a Facebook hardware button.

However, while these devices will all feature prominent Facebook integration, we’re also hearing that Facebook continues to work on a different and more exciting project: a ‘social’ version of Android that includes much deeper Facebook integration throughout the OS, stripping out Google’s apps in favor of its own. In other words, Facebook could have its own mobile operating system in the not-so-distant future.

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CashStar Raises $5 Million To Send You Gift Cards On Facebook

Digital gifting platform CashStar has raised $5 million today in a Series B round lead by Passport Capital and Allen and Company. In the same space as BlackHawk, First Data, Gift Tango and Swag, CashStar offers SaaS and white-label solutions for big brands who want to implement digital gifting systems.

With “ten times” as many customers as anybody else and partnerships with hundreds of retail brands including Starbucks, Coach, Williams Sonoma, Staples, Cheesecake Factory and The Gap, CashStar helps partners sell tens of millions in giftcards annually. It also offers an extensive range of gift card deployment options, including eGift cards, via Facebook and through your mobile phone.

Companies that partner up with CashStar on digital gifting end up seeing huge returns, for example on Christmas Eve partner Coach saw that gift cards made up 28% of total online sales. Starbucks, which just launched their CashStar eGift program, has yet to implement their deeper Facebook integration, but when it does you’ll be able to complete actions as simple as posting a cup of coffee to a friend’s wall. Home Depot is now experimenting with video gifting.

CEO David Douglas Stone holds that buying a gift is a personal expression, so the format you receive it in also has to be personal and reflective of the times, “Most of the companies that compete in the card market are still living off plastic.”

Stone plans on using the funding to increase the strength of CashStar’s retail network, explore other digital gifting options, increase the mobile CashStar experience as well as to hire more talent. “We’re going to continue to build the market from plastic to digital,” he says.

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