The rumors about Facebook working on “Project Spartan,” an HTML5-based mobile platform so that it could do an end-run around Apple’s App Store are plausible. The idea would be to run within the mobile Safari browser, an environment Apple has less control over. That way, Facebook could do apps promotion and distribution, and not have to share 30% of its Credits purchases cut with Apple. Facebook knows how to do social games distribution on the web even if, as Darrell Etherington writes, it doesn’t get mobile apps. All of the talk around Project Spartan today is about mobile phones. But there’s another iOS device out there that Facebook still doesn’t have an app for – the iPad. I wonder if that’s where a Project Spartan-like initiative might have its best success.