Could Facebook Launch Its Phone Next Week?

Is the long-rumored Facebook phone finally here? The social media giant has long denied having a phone in the works, but yesterday it issued an invitation to journalists, asking them to “Come see our new home on Android" on Thursday. And many tech watchers think this announcement will mean a new HTC phone running a modified version of Android designed for "deep native Facebook functionality," reports TechCrunch.

And why would Facebook want to go to all this trouble? Because such a deep embed could gather even more information about its users—and more data means better (and more expensive) ads. While HTC would do the tough work of making the actual phone, Facebook would concentrate the marketing campaign on the user experience, rather than hardware or software, with a rumored tag line of "More than just an app," reports 9to5Google. (More Facebook stories.)