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Facebook Home over a week later: only 500K installs with a two-star user rating
- GotAnyMegadeth 14y agoI am amazed that there is an app worse than Facebook for Android.
- mtgx 14y agoOnly if it's another app that's made by Facebook, it seems.
- RossM 14y agoTo be fair, the slow growth might partly be explained by their restricting it to a few devices in the US only.
- criley 14y agoI tried it out but I found it too suffocating -- Facebook, like Google, wants their "feed" to be your main IV-line of info-tainment but in practice the vapid updates of friends mixed in with poorly constructed advertisements isn't very engaging. If someone makes Facebook Home for aggregated RSS feeds, than they've invented mobile crack and I will never be able to put it down. So maybe don't do that. Also, Chat Heads is the best SMS implementation I've used on Android, so kudos to Facebook for that.
- TillE 14y agoFlipboard does quite a good job of grabbing content from multiple sources of your choice and displaying them in an attractive format. It's not a homescreen thing, but that's probably for the best. Do you really want non-urgent things shoved in your face constantly? Google Now has the most useful approach here, and I'm eager to see that developed even further. If you could populate it with selected RSS feeds, that would be nice.
- bergie 14y agoFlipboard does have a Daydream mode, where you can let it take the screen over whenever your Android device is docked or charging (you decide which, or both) This way essentially Flipboard-formatted RSS becomes your screen saver.
- spinchange 14y agoThis is an awesome new feature discovery for me, but I don't think my phone will ever have a net gain in charge anymore.
- spinchange 14y agoThe HTC One UI has an interesting feature for the default home screen that many compare to Flipboard called BlinkFeed. Choices of news feeds are limited and controlled, but it shows lots of promise in terms of attractive formatting and pulling in content from various social nets & news sources with tight integration with the social apps on your phone. (ala updating/replying/reposting something from home screen) http://blog.htc.com/2013/03/htc-one-blinkfeed/ http://blog.htc.com/2013/03/htc-one-blinkfeed/
- lallysingh 14y ago>If someone makes Facebook Home for aggregated RSS feeds, than they've invented mobile crack and I will never be able to put it down. So maybe don't do that. Reader?
- criley 14y agoErrr, no, Reader would be like the Facebook App. A dedicated app to do something... I mean, if someone created a full lockscreen/homescreen replacement around the idea of my feeds and my content with the same polish and quality that Facebook did, that that would be my killer app.
- Karunamon 14y agovapid updates of friends Don't friend people on Facebook who post garbage. Any social service (Facebook, Twitter, etc) is only as good as the effort you put into curating the experience. Oh, and if you feel you must friend someone, you can just hide everything they post from your news feed.
- rmrfrmrf 14y agoStop blaming the users for a bad product, especially when your suggestion goes against the core purpose of the product in question.
- spinchange 14y agoHas it occurred to you that there might be a use-case mismatch between treating a social network as a source of always-on, in-your-face infotainment and a communications vehicle with imperfect yet valued human beings you know and care about? Or do you expect everyone you know to be excellent, always-interesting, content curators?
- Karunamon 14y agoI expect users of a social network service to understand the most basic details of how such a service works. Slamming the service because you don't like the postings of people you chose to subscribe to is just a little bit ridiculous. It would be like subscribing to political blogs on $rssApp and then leaving bad ratings for the app because your news stream is filled with political news. Facebook's tools have been pretty good so far from blocking spam from friends. Games (the main offenders) can be outright hidden or blocked, noisy or shitposting friends can be turned down to manageable levels (updates -> only important) or hidden outright. Really the best thing they could add for flexibility is a keyword filter... So i'll say it again. You, the user, is ultimately responsible for what comes up in your stream.
- freshfunk 14y agoThere are no ads currently in Home. Are you sure you really paid attention?
- nwh 14y agoJust because there's no Facebook advertising itself doesn't mean there's no advertising. Facebook seems to be a crazy mix of "share and like and win" advertising, "share and like and win" like farming, floods of bait advertising from games, and any other number of bizarre scams their users get mixed up in.
- nooneelsebut 14y ago> the vapid updates of friends mixed in with poorly constructed advertisements isn't very engaging Did you really expect prolific and intense discussion? This is Facebook we're talking about here... If there were an HN Home I would download it without even thinking.
- alaskamiller 14y agoSimplest answer is Tumblr. It's crack to the digital kids these days.
- ed209 14y agoThey should have released two different products. Chat Heads and Facebook Home. I think Chat Heads looks like a strong product (only from referencing the videos though, I don't have it). Without Chat Heads, would Facebook Home have been released to such a fanfare?
- turing 14y agoUnless I'm mistaken, they did. Chat Heads is part of the most recent Facebook Messanger update. You can get it without Home.
- dtwwtd 14y agoChat Heads is actually a separate feature although I haven't seen many people online note this. I cannot yet install Facebook Home on my device but when I last updated the Facebook Messenger app on my phone, I got Chat Heads.
- iaskwhy 14y agoChat Heads is really great and it made me think apps multitasking could learn a thing from it. Say for example you double tap on the home button to get all open App Heads, close the ones you don't need anymore and open the others in mini windows by taping on their logos. I can see that being a much better experience than what we have right now (which is not multitasking at all). It's been a while since webOS appeared and still noone has the easy of use it had for multitasking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c20uhGxSxWo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c20uhGxSxWo
- ianstallings 14y agoI'm not sure if average user rating is a good indicator of quality. I've seen people give 1-star ratings because they wanted a feature that was missing.
- gcb0 14y agoThis is irrelevant. those intrusive apps are made with carrier integration in mind. You can't uninstall Facebook from any Samsung phone. And you won't uninstall Facebook home from the new s4 and updated s3 and notes. So, why care about user ratings?
- da_n 14y ago> You can't uninstall Facebook from any Samsung phone This is why I never stick with stock ROM (unless Nexus device), I have Cyanogenmod running on my Note II.
- Karunamon 14y agoYou can't "uninstall" any app that the carrier forces on you, but you can disable it as of ICS or better. The app is both prevented from running and hidden from the app drawer. In practice, the amount of storage you're denied from not being able to completely wipe these apps is miniscule. Just one of the neat bits of control that the newer Android versions give you :)
- kevincrane 14y agoWait, can you do that for the Google-default apps too? I have a half dozen Google+ settings/messengers/other things that I can't uninstall from my phone (Nexus), when I really just want to hide them from view.
- gehar 14y agoYes, you can Disable (most of?) them (in the same place you would Uninstall another app.) Disabling some of them, like the Google Play Services component (famous for killing batteries on Nexus 7 tablets), will cause apps (like G+) to nag you to Enable them.
- Karunamon 14y agoMy Galaxy Nexus lets me do it, anyways. I tried on the Play Store, GMail, etc. Looks like the only things it doesn't work on are the apps that are the interface to basic phone functions (dialer, messaging, etc).
- smackfu 14y ago"mostly thanks to more than 5,800 one-star reviews." AKA, protest ratings. "This sucks in principle and I will never use it since Facebook is stupid."
- Karunamon 14y agoAndroid doesn't let you rate things until after you've downloaded them, though. If that's truly the cause of these ratings, people are going through a lot of work to just say "facebook sucks".
- smackfu 14y agoActually, it does seem like a lot of people are writing somewhat legit reviews, although they show a pretty complete lack of understanding of what Facebook Home is. Stuff like "takes over my phone" and "hides my widgets" are the point of the app.
- incision 14y agoYep. At least you're required to install (Sort of, just hit install. Even if you cancel immediately, the option to review remains available) an app before being able to post a review on Play, it's surely a small deterrent, but the effect would surely be worse without it. I've been hoping Amazon would start culling non-verified purchases for a while now as they're quite established and the site has become the default soapbox for consumer outrage.
- iagomr 14y agoAdvertisement in my phone's background? Thanks, but no thanks
- andyhmltn 14y agoI would use it, but Facebook has just become one giant hub of spam for me now. Maybe 2 years ago, but now all I see on the lockscreen is stupid memes and posts from people I don't even know. I like the chat-heads concept though. To have a UI like that for texting phone-wide would be awesome.
- dendory 14y agoThese numbers are misleading. Facebook Home only works on a handful of devices. Even some of the devices that will actually allow you to download it, sometimes the install will then claim it is not supported. A lot of the reviews whine that the app is just not available to them. From people who actually can use it, Home seems rather well liked by Facebook users.
- Mordor 14y agoThe irony of forcing Facebook users to create a Google+ account so that they can give it a favorable review...
- badclient 14y agoMay be this is just be but I have never been comfortable with facebook's make-many-apps strategy. I've always used fb as a collective experience. I find the need to use different apps for different functionalities a pain in the ass, mostly because all facebook features are so intertwined.
- rmrfrmrf 14y ago"The freedom of Android allows me to turn my ordinary smartphone into a free, personal data mining, advertising platform! Take that, Apple!"
- untog 14y agoThe title feels clickbait-y. It should be pretty obvious why there were only 500K downloads- it's only available on around three devices. I'm interested to at least take a look at it, but I can't. As for the reviews, many of them are of the "I hate Facebook" variety, but others seem to state (correctly) that it need some work. Given Facebook have committed to monthly releases, I don't think this is the end of Facebook Home.
- incision 14y ago>It should be pretty obvious why there were only 500K downloads- it's only available on around three devices. Good point. I was a bit surprised to see that it isn't available to any of my half dozen devices.
- whatsup 14y agoreal number is likely much less than 500K seeing as how most people report immediately uninstalling it
- AznHisoka 14y agoI see it in another way. There's another reason why they have so many downloads - Facebook is a brand name, and people just wanted to try it out, they'll uninstall it the next day.
- benhanks040888 14y agoEven if the 500k number is acceptable since it's only available on selected devices, the 2 stars average rating is undeniable. As comparison, Facebook for Android app has the average rating of 3,5. So I guess the 2 stars should be taken as an alert for the Facebook Home developers to keep working on it.
- kevincrane 14y agoA lot of people rate Facebook at 1-star because they don't like Facebook as a whole (I think I saw the term "protest vote" somewhere else in this thread). The reviews that just say "I hate Facebook" clearly aren't indicative of Home as a whole.
- wiradikusuma 14y agoI've just installed it, and unfortunately most of my friends post food/baby photos and weird re-shares, and there's no option to download only on WiFi, so I uninstalled it.
- kaio 14y agoI'm pretty sure a lot of developers would be more than happy with "only" 500K downloads ... especially with only a few supported devices like this. Makes me wonder if a lot of negative ratings is just another marketing strategy. "You have to see how crappy this app is"
- omni 14y agoWhat an average developer would be happy with is not relevant in any way to a multi-billion dollar company with investors to answer to.
- speedyrev 14y ago500K installs. How many turned around and uninstalled? So far everyone I know that tried it has uninstalled it. (I understand that it could be my circle of friends...)
- unreal37 14y ago"Only 500K installs". How many app developers would kill for 500K installs. Its a good number for what it is - letting Facebook take over your home screen.
- baby 14y agoFor those who tried it, is Home the answer to the conflict between Messenger and Facebook? the two apps from Facebook that would give you twice the notification in case of a message. I get that people will all have internet on their phone in a few years and that launching a service like facebook messenger right now is clever, but it didn't have the technology to detect if facebook app was installed to disable the notification in at least one of the apps. I'm seeing Home as the "fix" but can't try it on my device...
- machbio 14y agoHow people are led to believe the lie, its only available in 4 devices..they compare it to instagram's android entry..how dumb can one get.. facebook should have released it as a beta product, it feels very barebone