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Facebook Launches "Home" For Android

Posted by timothy on from the hold-you-you're-making-me-quasi dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Facebook has announced "Home" for Android smartphones (and, eventually, tablets). It's something less than a full Facebook mobile operating system, as some expected before the company's presentation, and more like an app update. Facebook also announced the Facebook Home Program, which will work with several carriers and device makers to pre-load Home onto select devices, including ones built by Samsung, Sony, ZTE, and Lenovo. The first "Home" phone will be the HTC First, a $99.99 phone that will ship April 12 from AT&T. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told analysts and journalists assembled for his presentation that Home was designed to reorient the phone and the Facebook mobile experience around people, not apps: "On one level, Home is the next mobile version of Facebook. On the other, it's a change in the relationship with the next generation of computing devices." Home essentially is a custom start screen for your Android phone, replacing the home screen with one centered on Facebook. While users can access other Android apps on the phone, the focus is on those apps that run on the Facebook platform. Home can also be enabled as a lock screen." Reader RougeFemme points out that France Telecom/Orange will be the first carrier in Europe.

20 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Umm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No thank you.

    1. Re:Umm.. by X0563511 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Agreed... and fuck them for their preloading bullshit. ... and they wonder why we want to root our phones...

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  2. When do we return to real tech? by concealment · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The last 15 years of internet dominance have been neat, but it seems like all of the "inventions" are clever ways to interact with each other. Entertainment and consumer products are booming, but what actual technologies are we inventing? Or to put it another way: what opportunities have gone past while we've been inventing toys and minting teenage millionaires?

    1. Re:When do we return to real tech? by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Know that tiny device in your pocket that responds to touch and lets you browse the entirety of human knowledge, play games or work from a beach in Tahiti while still letting you call Mom once a week to let her know you're alive? Yeah, that's what technology we invented in the last 15 years. If that doesn't impress you, I'm not sure what will.

    2. Re:When do we return to real tech? by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You should be. We worked hard making components smaller, CPUs more energy efficient, touch screens more reliable, operating systems better suited for mobile environments, improved battery power density, created wireless protocols to support higher data rates, and constructed enough radio towers to support all this.

      You act like it should have happened overnight.

      --
      These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
    3. Re:When do we return to real tech? by vux984 · · Score: 2

      So just like my laptop fifteen years ago, but smaller and doesn't need a modem cable plugged into the wall any more.

      smaller (fits in a brief case to fits in a pocket)

      faster (can download a picture in a minute or two to can stream video at higher resolution than your 15 year old laptop)

      memory / storage ( thousands of times more of both)

      touch screen (vs look screens?)

      and all that with no cables

      I am so impressed by your rapid progress of technological evolution.

      I am. I can't imagine why you are being sarcastic.

    4. Re:When do we return to real tech? by binary+paladin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In the sense that a car is nothing but a "better" version of the first wheeled cart. I mean, what the hell have we been doing for the last 7,000 years? Geez.

    5. Re:When do we return to real tech? by vux984 · · Score: 2

      Because all that has done is made doing the same things a bit faster with a bit smaller device.

      Real time video communication between two people anywhere in the civilized world with devices they have in their pocket isn't something we could do before.

      I guess I'm trying to see how high you've set the bar before you'll recognize something as progress. I mean, 1000x times faster, 10 times smaller, with an interface (multi-touch screen with no stylus) that was mostly science fiction 15 years ago and is usable enough to have actually displaced physical keyboards / buttons on the devices, and a data rate fast enough for real time video.

      All cars did was let us go faster, farther, with fewer incidents of your engine getting spooked by loud noises? No real progress.

      Stealth fighters are just faster more maneuverable biplanes that are harder to see with radar. No real progress there either.

      I just don't really see where you are coming from.

    6. Re:When do we return to real tech? by SJHillman · · Score: 2

      Ok, show me a tiny, low power multi-core processor like many smartphones have that was around in the late 90's. Show me a touchscreen that had anywhere near the sensitivity of even cheap smartphones today. Or a GPS receiver that could be shoehorned into a tiny phone without sacrificing any of the other gadgets in it. Sure, the precursors of many of today's smartphone components existed but almost nothing in a 2012 or 2013 smartphone. It's like saying cars existed in ancient Egypt because they had horses and carts.

  3. Planning on replacing my home phone with by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    a Home phone.

    Marketing genius. E.T. phone home.

    Hey homes did you get a new Home phone? Yeah but I left it at home.

  4. TFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This article is just one big press release.

    From the “Home” screen, users can swipe left and right to access the user’s News Feed (now renamed “Cover Feed”). Users can comment and Like images, which are blown up to the size of the screen. Videos won’t be shown, group posts won’t show up, and there won’t be any ads—at least at first. Swiping the screen down brings up the app drawer (Android apps, said a Facebook product manager who asked not to be named) instead of apps designed to run atop the Facebook platform.

    WHy is Facebook doing this? Why do they do anything?

    What is their profit center?

    Your data. This is just a ploy to gather data about users - and it wouldn't surprise me if this app is using the GPS/Maps part of Android to get your movements.

    FB's makes their money spying on people and sharing data with marketers,

    Keep that in mind. They are a marketer's wet dream.

    1. Re:TFA by Zaelath · · Score: 2

      No, Google are like the greasy loser that fucks your sister.

      Facebook are like the greasy loser that sells your sister for crack.

  5. Re:User = Product by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Dull and covered in hair and dead skin?

  6. Sub-process by QuietLagoon · · Score: 2

    ...Home essentially is a custom start screen for your Android phone, replacing the home screen with one centered on Facebook....

    So everything you run on the Facebook phone-Home device is a sub-process of Facebook's snooping program. Zucky must be beside himself with all the extra data that will be collected on the Facebook sheeple.

  7. I use FB less and less... by IANAAC · · Score: 2

    My FB usage has gone down a lot over the last year. I just can't see it going back up. I suppose the concept of "Home" is nice (even though it's just to harvest your data), but, well... I'd never use it.

  8. I know we'll all hate it on Slashdot... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Funny

    But I bet my sister installs this onto her phone the first hour it's available to her.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  9. So basically a custom launcher by DrXym · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Android lets you replace the launcher and other component parts and it looks like that is all this Facebook app is doing. Given how intrusive and battery sapping their app is, I think I'll pass.

  10. Geez, two snitches at once... by nweaver · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Rather than having a phone that's designed to spill everything I do to Google, I get a phone designed to spill everything I do to both Google AND Facebook. Geez, loverly.

    --
    Test your net with Netalyzr
  11. if you want this phone... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...I probably already hate you

  12. *claps* Bravo, Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That is impressive. Very, very impressive.

    Not the software - that sounds mediocre at best.

    But the business plan is genius. Without having to create their own OS, they can Borg-ify the majority of existing Android phones out there. By creating their own launcher, they can bury Google features completely, if they so chose to - redirecting most ad-related Android traffic away from Google, and over to Facebook. At the same time, the small group of users who use Google+, who have likely been using the Android app as well, will (I'm guessing) find it much, much easier to post directly to Facebook.

    I can't stand Facebook - and the above sounds horrifying. But I'd put money on this being their strategy.