TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Jean-Louis Gassée wonders if there’s a bigger reason for a Facebook phone than defending against Google:

I can’t help but think that there’s more to this hypothetical Facebook phone than a play against today’s Google+ in defense of today’s Facebook money pump. There must be something else in Facebook’s future, a new revenue stream that it will eventually need to promote/protect. But what?

The obvious reason is to make Facebook independent of Apple or Google; currently, Facebook relies on iOS and Android devices for people to use their platform, and Apple and Google could theoretically block them in the future or make moves which inhibit their business.

That’s defensive. A bigger reason is that currently, Facebook is largely an app on these devices, and not a platform in and of itself. iOS and Android are the platforms, and Facebook stands on them. But Facebook doesn’t want to be an app—they want to be the platform for people to use and other applications and businesses build on top of.

Last year, I wrote about Facebook’s strategy and what it means for society. I wrote:

That is a lot of information. As Facebook integrates with more devices and applications, and as we begin sharing more information, they are building a map of society. They are building a map of how people live, what they do, what they like, who they interact with and how, and how society is evolving. Our information is their business, not just our attention.

What better way to get more people using their platform and using it even more than they do now than by (1) making the other platforms—iOS and Android—commodities, and (2) making a device that makes Facebook the operating system?

They’re trying to do the first object by making Facebook applications that are HTML5-based and thus that can be run on any OS with modern web standards support. This would, if successful, make Facebook where people go to get some of their applications, and thus would make the underlying operating system much less relevant. If all of your applications are web-based and come from Facebook, what device you use doesn’t matter nearly as much as it does now.

But a Facebook phone could be even more convincing. Imagine a device where everything is pulled from Facebook. Your contacts come from your friends’ profiles. Your photos are stored on Facebook’s servers. All messages are sent through Facebook, so you don’t need to worry about text messages. Your calendar is hooked up to Facebook and can see what events your friends are attending.

For people that like Facebook, that’d be pretty great, and they would certainly use Facebook a lot more. If Facebook releases a phone, that’s what it’s about: making Facebook into a platform on the same level as iOS and Android, and one that can grow into the platform for everything on the web.