Ron Amadeo, from Ars Technica, on Facebook considering an Android Watch:

The Information says Facebook’s smartwatch push is part of a larger plan aimed at “controlling the next computing platforms after smartphones.” In the smartphone era, Facebook is at the mercy of the two big smartphone operating system vendors, Google and Apple, neither of which have a particularly good relationship with Facebook.

The need for a platform looms large over this announcement, particularly given the recent tiff between Facebook and Apple over user tracking. But as the article points out, they’ve got quite the hill to climb to be successful in this endeavour: if Google had trouble doing it, then the prospects of Facebook succeeding here look tiny.

Some free advice for Facebook from someone with no branding or product design experience: consider spinning the hardware devision out into a separate brand, and keep the relationship between the two as quiet as you can. Given the current reputation of the company, I’m not sure developers will like to advertise that they’re building stuff for the Facebook Watch.