Facebook became a mobile first company in the last 12 months, according to Christian Hernandez, director, vertical business partnerships at the social networking giant in his presentation at IAB Mobile Engage a few minutes ago, entitled ‘Social is Mobile’. 

Hernandez didn’t actually utter the words: “Facebook is the primary function of a smartphone today” during the presentation, but they did form the title of one of the slides he used, which showed 23 per cent of smartphone usage devoted to Facebook (in fact, 21 per cent Facebook, 2 per cent Instagram), with Google sites in second place on just 10 per cent.

Hernandez revealed that on a daily basis, Facebook sees more users on mobile than on the web. In the UK, Facebook has 26m monthly active users on mobile, out of a total of 34m. On a global basis, Facebook has 655m daily active mobile users.

Hernandez noted that the majority of people on the planet, 4.5bn of them to be precise, have never used the internet, and that the next generation of mobile users will mostly access the web purely through a mobile device.

He explained to delegates how Facebook had to “retool” the company’s engineers with a mobile first mindset, and how it had worked over the past year to create a more unified Facebook experience across different connected devices.

He also referenced the number of mobile news feed story impressions daily – 65bn – and urged brands to use the news feed as a way of engaging with consumers, pointing out that 65 per cent of likes and interactions happen in the news feed.

Summing up, Hernandez encouraged brands to look at mobile and social more strategically, rather than an (often last-minute) add-on. “Social and mobile should not be objectives,” he said. “They should be at the core of the creative process, your planning and execution.”

It was no surprise to hear Facebook bigging up mobile in this way, but it was interesting to hear Hernandez talking about retooling the company for mobile first, and he did manage to avoid spending too much time telling the audience that everything is mobile now.

To be fair, I haven’t heard the phrase “mobile is the remote control to our lives” mentioned once today, but a few of the speakers have felt the need to make the point that the world has already gone mobile, and if you haven’t, you’re in danger of missing the boat. Having said that, I concede that I have maybe been to too many conferences and that many of the brand budget-holders in the audience today are still to dip their toes in the mobile waters. It seems incredible to me, but maybe it’s true.