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Facebook Launches "Home" For Android
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.
No thank you.
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.
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.
Dull and covered in hair and dead skin?
But I bet my sister installs this onto her phone the first hour it's available to her.
#DeleteChrome
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.
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.
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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...
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.