NEW BLOG: Last week the announcement of the Facebook-led internet.org initiative that will bring connectivity to five billion people in the developing world attracted a huge amount of attention.

That’s unsurprising. Combine the Facebook founder with a roster of leading tech companies, as well as mobile operators, academics and NGOs, and it’s big news.

Less discussed is what exactly those billions of people will use their new-found connectivity for. And bear in mind we will be talking almost exclusively about mobile connectivity.

However, listen back to the CNN interview in which Zuckerberg announced internet.org and he provides some clues.

“Here, we use Facebook to share news and catch up with our friends but there they are going to use it to decide what kind of government they want, get access to healthcare for the first time ever, connect with family hundreds of miles away they haven’t seen for decades. Getting access to the internet is a really big deal. I think we are going to be able to do it,” he told CNN.

The “we’ is the founding members of internet.org who are Ericsson, Mediatek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung.

Of this list, the last two have some experience in healthcare, particularly the US chip vendor which has established a mobile health unit called Qualcomm Life. Samsung has released health apps to accompany its handset launches.

And of course health services already exists in many developing markets courtesy of mobile operators who are usually working in alliance with partners such as government, NGOs or other partners. Often the deployments are not as big as many hoped they would be but a start has been made.

Facebook is not the first to show off a grand vision. Google has been here before. And it’s easy to be cynical that this is a lightly-disguised move to boost the Facebook brand and, hence, its long-term prospects in developing markets.

Zuckerberg had a response for that too. “If we were focused on just making money, the first billion people we have connected have way more money than the next six billion combined. It’s not fair but it’s the way that it is. And we just believe everyone deserves to be connected to the internet….”

That’s a good answer, although it’s also worth pointing out that this kind of initiative does not necessarily need to generate profits in the developing world to have a value for Facebook.

It can have a domestic benefit in terms of burnishing the image of a company among many users who are otherwise somewhat sceptical about the internet giant.

But let’s not be too hard on him. In the same interview, Zuckerberg was asked why he is also trying to reform immigration policy in the US. He answered: “When we first talked about this, a lot of people were worried this was going to be a problem for Facebook and I just decided that this is too important of an issue for the country. It’s about eleven million people who came here to work hard and contribute to the country.”

He seemed passionate on this subject, which is an important one. Mind you, as serious as US immigration policy is, it is a small problem compared to the global threat of chronic disease. Let’s hope Zuckerberg & Co find the same commitment to building the infrastructure that can reduce that threat for billions of users around the world.

 

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