Facebook has sought to assert its grip on the mobile internet by announcing a platform for operators that will make it easier for people to access the networking site on their phones.

Mobile users will now be able to install a specific Facebook application on their phones which will let them receive newsfeeds, messages, status updates, 'pokes' and other features from the site.

The social networking site, which now has 8.9 million users in the UK, has partnered with Vodafone to release the service, but it is expected that similar deals with other operators will be announced soon.

Facebook already has a mobile website which people can access on their phones, but it often means going first to a web browser and typing in the address. The new offering from Vodafone will mean people can click directly on an icon in the phone menu, called a widget.

Operators will also be able to integrate more effectively with Facebook's site, meaning that users can get more regular updates - like with 'push e-mail' - rather than having to always to log in.

Vodafone already has similar arrangements with other networking sites, such as MySpace and Bebo, but the deal with Facebook - the largest social network in the UK - highlights how important the mobile platform has become for web-based services.

Google, the search giant, has recently revamped its mobile search function so that results can be targeted according to a user's location. Yahoo!, meanwhile, has struck a deal with T-Mobile which allows companies to create a simple, mobile-friendly version of their site using a piece of Yahoo! software.

At stake is the lucrative mobile advertising market, which is small but expected to grow enormously as the experience of using the internet on mobiles improves with greater network speeds and more sophisticated devices.

No financial details of the deal with Vodafone were released, although Facebook is reported to have said that operators will share revenue resulting from subscribers accessing Facebook on their phones.

Vodafone subscribers will be able to access the site as part of a £7.50 'mobile internet bundle' which gives them 120Mb of data a month.

Tom Bird, an analyst at CCS Insight, said the growth of social networking applications on phones had in part been driven by many companies banning access to such sites from work computers, forcing employees to search them out elsewhere.

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