Facebook is finding success recruiting users overseas by working with wireless carriers,...

Facebook is finding success recruiting users overseas by working with wireless carriers, said Eric Tseng, the company’s head of mobile products. Facebook has more than 150 million mobile users worldwide, he said. “Partnering with carriers in any geography certainly helps with distribution and getting our messaging out,” he said Tuesday at the MobileBeat conference in San Francisco. Handsets have given Facebook access to users without PCs, he said. Mobile phone use is high in many countries where Facebook has carrier partnerships, such as India and Russia, but not all subscribers have data plans, Tseng said. So the company is working with some carriers on promotions to give users access at no charge to Facebook’s mobile website, he said. In the U.S., social networking will soon play a role in how smartphone users find and download new applications for their devices, Tseng said. “As we get more apps that’s great, but the normal user is not going to go through hundreds of thousands of apps on their phone,” he said. “There is a need for people to have the relevant content … filtered to the top. I think that social context is going to help.” Each app store eventually will have a social network “baked in,” Tseng said. “If they want to use Facebook, that’s great. But it’s really their own call.” The company has no plans to put ads on its mobile site yet, he said: For now, it’s still trying to attract users. “We're not particularly anxious to get ads rolled out on Facebook Mobile,” Tseng said. “Similar to a lot of companies that are at this stage, we're all about growth.” He said when Facebook wants to introduce ads, that will be simple.