Mark Zuckerberg now plans to reach 7 billion of the world's citizens online. He plans to enter into partnership with some of the largest mobile technology companies. The young CEO says the web is an essential part of life. Everyone deserves to be connected with one another, which ever part of the world they live.
Internet not only connects us to our families, friends and communities, but it is also connecting us to the foundation of the global knowledge economy," Zuckerberg had written in a paper posted to his Facebook page late on the Tuesday. The title asks "Is Connectivity a Human Right?"
Connecting more people to the internet is like a philanthropy that will create a number of potential Facebook users. This will also help to improve the company's bottom line.
"There is nothing wrong with that," said Fordham University communications professor Mr. Paul Levinson. He is the author of "New New Media."
Having access to the internet is a profoundly prominent human right in the 21st century.
To reach there, Facebook Inc. on Wednesday had announced a partnership with Internet.org. It includes the world's biggest social network, along with Korean electronics giant Samsung, Nokia and wireless chip maker Qualcomm Inc. More companies are expected to join in partnership with Facebook.
Facebook team states that the company's goal is to "get internet access available to the two-thirds of the world who are not yet connected" – nearly about 5 billion people.
Levinson called the project "profoundly humanistic while adding "at the same time, I would never say that Facebook is run by angels."
Levinson said “If this effort pays off, then Facebook will expand its user base, advertising revenue and control. Business and philanthropy, in this case, will go hand in hand.”
The plan of the group is still in an early rough-draft phase, including developing cheaper smartphones and tools that will reduce the amount of information required to operate mobile applications. For Facebook, this move will certainly add a number of users to its current 1.15 billion and with them more advertising revenue. Still, Zuckerberg paints the effort as something larger.
"For nine years, we have been on the mission to connect the world. We have now connected to more than 1 billion people, but we will have to solve much bigger problems to connect the next 5. The vast majority of people do not have an access to the internet," Zuckerberg wrote.
He even pointed out that people who already use Facebook "have way more money when compared to the rest of the world." That means it may "not be beneficial for us to serve the next few billion people for a very long time, if ever. But we believe everyone deserves to be connected together."
Most of Facebook's users live outside the U.S., and much of the site's new user base will come from developing countries in the years ahead. While most Americans first got online using desktops, many of the Internet's newest users are bypassing PCs entirely. They rely on mobile phones instead.
Javier Olivan, the vice president of growth and analytics at Facebook, said Facebook's move continues what the company has already been doing to get many people online. This includes "Facebook For Every Phone." This is an app that was launched in 2011. This app will allow people with basic and non-smartphones use Facebook. The company has invested more than $1 billion so far to connect people in the developing countries to the internet.
The Internet.org project is Zuckerberg's latest venture that seeks to meld philanthropy with ambition.
The billionaire CEO had made his first charitable splash in 2010, two years before his company went public, when he donated $100 million in Facebook Inc. stock to Newark, N.J., schools. He then gave another $500 million to a Silicon Valley charity with an aim of funding health and education issues. Earlier this year, he launched Fwd.us, a political group that aimed at changing immigration policy, boosting education and encouraging investment in scientific research.
Web browser developer Opera Software and MediaTek, Wireless equipment company Ericsson, another wireless semiconductor company, are also the founding members of Internet.org.
Google Inc., which is not a member of the Internet.org effort launched a similar project earlier this year with the purpose of getting the entire Earth online. The project is called as the Project Loon, the effort launched internet-beaming antennas up on giant helium balloons.
