Facebook announces January 15 media event – says it’s building something….

Facebook is holding a media event at its Menlo Park headquarters next week. Designed to create a bit of a buzz, the invitation is deliberately vague, saying only, “Come and see what we’re building.”

With tech-heads from around the world currently drooling over all the offerings at CES in Las Vegas, Facebook has apparently been feeling a little neglected, envious of all the attention being lavished upon the likes of Samsung and Sony. But of course, CES is a hardware-centric occasion, and Facebook doesn’t make hardware. Not yet, at least.

You see, on Tuesday the social networking giant sent out a press invitation with the teasing words “Come and see what we’re building”. The event will take place at its Menlo Park headquarters in California on January 15 at 10am PT.

So what’s in store? It could be – perhaps, maybe, possibly – something to do with the often-talked-about-but-never-confirmed Facebook phone. It hit the headlines again last week when a list of HTC device code names was leaked, which happened to include ‘Opera’, a name which has been linked to the Facebook phone….if indeed there is one.

Then again, you might argue the appearance of a Facebook phone is about as likely as Mark Zuckerberg turning up to the event in a ballerina outfit singing Abba’s Lay All Your Love On Me – because the invitation says “see what we’re building” not “see what we’ve built”. It wouldn’t look too impressive if out of his trouser pocket he pulled some bits of plastic, a 5-inch display, a processor and a tub of glue and said, “It’s going to be a smartphone,” would it. Oh, and just four months ago, Zuckerberg said in an interview that a Facebook phone “just doesn’t make any sense.”

But surely next week’s event has to be something significant, something big, otherwise why the vagueness of the invitation? Facebook knows it’s going to create a stir, so it wants to unveil something to a fanfare, not a raspberry.

If you’ve any ideas – whether carefully thought through or utterly absurd – as to what the social networking company has up its sleeve, do take a moment to let us know in the comments below.