Facebook, it’s been revealed, had been working on a phone, but in the end the project died. Apparently, CEO Mark Zuckerberg selected a special team and even put them in their own building where they were put in charge of designing a Facebook Phone. So what happened
Well, according to Liz Gannes and Ina Fried at All Things D, the project was just too ambitious and too costly. “The project quickly spiraled out of Facebook’s expertise and into budgets that were impossible without an IPO or perhaps a billion-dollar fundraising,” they revealed in their report.
That’s not all, though. Apparently, jealousy started creeping in throughout the organization since these engineers were “chosen” by Zuckerberg. “This was an exclusive and hand-picked group, which generated awkwardness within Facebook’s flat organization. That’s because Facebook has historically only ever made one product — its social platform. To have a secret team operating out of a separate building drew a lot of interest and also jealousy from other employees, multiple sources said,” the report continued.
If you actually desire a Facebook phone, the good news is that you’ll be getting a version of sorts still. Facebook is currently working on a phone that will be built by HTC and run on Android.
Source: All Things D
