Facebook is hosting a special press event tomorrow at its Menlo Park headquarters, in California, and the rumour mill is working overtime with suggestions about what the social network could reveal.
Large press events are rare for Facebook, and last year the social network hosted such an event to announce a partnership with Skype and the rolling out of video chat (along with a revamp of Facebook chat as a whole).
The secretive invitation stated only "Come see what we're building" and other details are few and far between. According to TechCrunch, after hounding those who may be in the know, the only forthcoming information was that the announcement will be "big" and "mobile".
Despite Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg having dispelled rumours of a Facebook phone in 2011, some commentators remain convinced that such a device could be in the works.
Zuckerberg has laughed off speculation around a Facebook phone, saying: "It's so clearly the wrong strategy for us... Let's say we built a phone theoretically (we're not), maybe we could get 10 million or 20 million people to use it - it doesn't move the needle for us.
"The strategy that we have is different to every other technology company that is building their own hardware and operating system like Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon, Microsoft, everyone. We're going in the opposite direction. We want to build a system which is as deeply as possible integrated into every major device and things that people want to use," said Zuckerberg.
While building a Facebook phone may be "the wrong strategy", there is also a possibility that Facebook is building its own mobile operating system. Such rumours were doing the rounds last year following Facebook's acquisition of Instagram, bolstering of its messaging services, and general strengthening of its mobile footprint. At the time, there were also mutterings of Facebook possibly looking to buy out the maker of the Opera browser - Opera Software. The growth of Facebook's own App Centre could also mean the social networking is gearing up to try and truly dominate all aspects of mobile.
Other possibilities
Phone and OS rumours aside, Facebook has been quite public about the fact that it is doubling down on improving its Android experience - the platform which is set to provide the most potential growth for Facebook in the foreseeable future. This follows Facebook's release of its native iOS application late last year. However, this announcement was revealed via a simple status update from Zuckerberg, meaning that unless the social network is doing something distinctly different to its native iOS experience, it's unlikely a new Android app would be given its own launch event.
Some have also ventured a guess that the announcement may build on the newly-released Messenger features, which included voice messages. Even in Facebook's own rhetoric around the new feature, sending voice messages instead of typing while driving was used as a potential use case. As cars become more connected, a possible version of Messenger for cars may not be all that far-fetched.
More conservative speculation remains centred around Facebook simply revealing the ways in which it is overcoming the challenge of successfully monetising mobile with new mobile advertising strategies than can prove their worth to advertisers. Another more conservative guess would be to do with Facebook's efforts to improve search on the social network.
This is a possibility that Zuckerberg has also hinted at in the past, saying search is an interesting space for Facebook and there is "a big opportunity there at some point and we just need to go do that".
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