Forgot your phone? There's now a Facebook app for that

Heaven forbid, you forget your phone. You need to make a urgent call, but all you have with you is an iPod Touch. Well, now you can use your iPod to call your Facebook friends.

The app - produced

The app - produced by internet telephony company Vonage and available for iPhone, Android devices, and the iPod Touch (the latter only allowing outbound calls) - lets users call Facebook friends using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), providing both parties have downloaded the app. Users will eventually be able to make calls (both incoming and outgoing) through the iPad.

But the release of this new app provokes an unavoidable question: how many of your Facebook friends would you feel comfortable being able to call your mobile phone?

Michael Tempora, senior vice president of programme management and strategic initiatives at Vonage, said: "I expect that's the case [that people don't want every one of their Facebook friends being able to call their mobile phone]. Certainly you always have ability to decline a call. Incoming calls will ring your phone and users still have the option to decline or accept.

In other words, your downloading of the app and accepting of Facebook friend requests are taken as double confirmation that the people you befriend online are the people you'd be happy calling your phone. Online social networking, however, isn't as straightforward. That is, of course, unless you've adopted a personal Facebook policy readying for the day when your friends would be able to call your phone. Or preparing for a day when your child's Facebook friends can call their mobile phone.

Paradigm changer for the consumer

"It's a paradigm changer for the consumer, and one that takes advantage of broadband networks. It's exciting for consumers and another step for us in using VoIP technology to deliver great value for consumers."

"It's certainly very important to us," Tempora said. "But it's absolutely consistent with our vision that people should be able to call from anywhere they are using any broadband device that's convenient. This is an important first step for us but it's just the start, we expect in future to provide a wide range of apps.

"Going forward, we will expand on the launch to add additional communities - some already existing online - or social communities like family. We will also add device platforms - other mobile devices, PCs, Macs and premium services like the ability to call from Facebook to phone numbers as well as instant messaging components."

This is, of course, assuming whilst I was dumb enough to forget my phone I did remember to pick up my MP3 player (rather than having one unified device).

Just saying Patrician, the guardian along with other media outlets have a policy to include key internet terms in their articles to increase the site's hit rate.

I'm not sure why you think this is pointless. This could potentially be huge, and whilst i don't think it will spell the death of the standard cellular network, it's a move that could put a huge dent in skypes voip dominance (which incidentally, you can't get for Android) and potentially remove the need for a phone number.You have your contacts essentially stored on facebook. Internet only sim for as little as £5/month...i'm not sure how that is pointless. It may even do facebook friend whores some good. I just wish google voice would come to the UK, or do some kind of voip offering.

I agree with HotSoup, this could be huge and could save people ££'s. I never understand why more people dont use skype anyway. My girlfriend had very poor mobile signal at her house in the sticks, we regularly use iphone skype to XP skype to get around it.

I have Vonage Voip at home - it's pretty awesome, actually. I get free calls to the UK which is a big plus for me, and it only costs $10 a month. Marvellous. Mind you, because its a voip phone it conks out when the internet does (like when my router went kaput last month)..although we have it set up to forward automatically to a mobile when it's out, so thats nice.