> "Their mobile presence is at the behest of Apple, Google and (arguably) Microsoft."
A majority of non-techy types I know bought smart phones because they "do facebook". There is a deeply symbiotic relationship there, and woe is the mobile maker that couldn't provide a Facebook app.
I finally decided to upgrade my iPhone 3 a couple of months ago when the Facebook app stopped working for some obscure reason and I couldn't update the app anymore. I'm a programmer, but probably not a "techie".
Also, I think it's kind of wrong to continue making this distinction between "real life" and "FB-life" or "internet-life", as in "real life friends" (which are ok) versus "Facebook friends" (which presumably are just a "lie" or "fake").
e.g. former coworkers, old high school friends, friends of friends, etc.
However, they have a lot of improvements to do, starting with being freaking slow compared to going to facebook.com in the browser.
I don't see how Facebook wants to make money of such an usage pattern, so at the moment it doesn't help them very much that people have smart phones to "do facebook".
The mobile app fuels the addiction which keeps people logged in and coming back every day on their browser.
FB wouldn't see everywhere a user goes, but they'd know when/where the user was, when they thought something was worth a picture.
And with the face-tagging stuff, they can get additional time-space data on photo subjects as well.