Facebook is reportedly working on expanding its reach into the mobile world, by establishing a partnership with Nokia Corp. While the terms of such an agreement are yet to be uncovered, the social network's features will probably get embedded into several Nokia phones, The Wall Street Journal has learnt.

 

The companies have been negotiating a collaboration for some time now, but it is still uncertain whather a deal will actually be signed. WSJ said that one part of the deal could include integrating contact information stored in Facebook with the phone’s address book, allowing users to see if their contacts are online, send them messages or post comments on their profile pages.

 

None of the two companies was eager to confirm the rumors, but a Facebook spokeswoman told WSJ that they are dedicated to working with and developing partnerships with mobile operators and device makers all over the world… This doesn’t sound like a ‘no’ to me.

 

The partnership shouldn’t come as s surprise considering that many phone makers today choose to integrate social networking features into their devices. Nokia is already one of these phone makers, so the partnership would presumably result in a deepening of the collaboration with the social networking site.

 

Social networking services have increased in popularity over the past months, recent studies have shown. Last October, ABI Research revealed that nearly half of the social network population uses mobile phones to access the social networking sites.

 

The survey also revealed that at least 50 percent of the users use mobile social networks to check for comments and messages from friends, while 45 percent of them post status updates for their friends to be able to know what they’ve been up to.