Back in May, Japan’s second largest mobile carrier KDDI au struck a deal with Facebook under which the social network would be featured prominently on future smartphones, for example in the form of a widget.
And now KDDI makes it possible [JP] for users of their proprietary email system EZweb to automatically browse their cell phone email history to look up Facebook friends, on both smartphones and feature phones (and the PC).
The way it works is that via Facebook, users can filter out who’s on Facebook already and who’s not – based on the contacts users exchanged emails with (@ezweb.ne.jp) in the last 30 days.
In a next step, users can send friend requests to people who are already registered or invite those to join them on Facebook who aren’t yet:
Given that Japanese teenagers tend to use email as the preferred form of mobile communication (not too few send and receive hundreds per day) and that KDDI au boasts 33 million subscribers, this is quite a nice win for Facebook.
Via Markezine [JP]
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