Last week, Facebook announced a new application for iPhone and iPad devices that runs on Apple's iOS mobile operating system. This application is a native app -- meaning it's written using Apple's proprietary technologies and you must download it from Apple's App Store.

This represents an about-face.  Faceboook has traditionally touted HTML5 and mobile web, and their original application was based on web technologies. Actually it was a "Hybrid App" -- a way to describe apps  that use web technologies but are wrapped by a native layer to take advantage of some device capabilities.

So why this shift? And does it signal some kind of a trend?  Should traditional enterprises take note?

The short answer to the first question is that this was done for performance and usability reasons. A longer, more detailed explanation can be found in this blog post.

As for whether this signals a new trend, my answer is a big No. Facebook is a consumer service that needs to push advertising in a mobile environment, and the company likely concluded that native apps would offer a better opportunity to do so.  Note, however, that few months back, FT.com did the opposite: they ditched native apps in favor of HTML5 apps. So these shifts will continue to happen and you should not base your strategy on such isolated incidents.

Also, to be clear, Facebook is not moving completely to native apps. The company will continue to serve its huge user base using their HTML5 version that allows them to target the "long tail," and will use native apps that are optimized for iOS (and likely for Android in future).

We have said many times before (such as here or here) that different approaches will co-exist, and that each of them can be more suitable than others depending on your circumstances. Enterprises should take a longer-term view and not lurch with the latest consumer trend.

This may well lead to a blended approach. For most content-oriented scenarios we recommend you consider web apps as a mandatory requirement and then consider how — or if — you need a native app for that specific business scenario.

I'll cover some of these related issues in this forthcoming webinar. Hope you can join me.