What Facebook wants and needs more than anything is time. And in today's world, there is nothing more influential or time-sucking than the technology kept by our side 24/7 in our purses or pocketed smartphones. With Home, Facebook could immediately increase the amount of time its mobile users spend on its network by almost tenfold.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveils Home (Click Image To Enlarge)
In the realm of mobile and social media, the phrase "out of sight, out of mind" carries tremendous impact. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg highlighted this divergence and huge potential during the unveiling of Home, noting that the average mobile user checks her Facebook app up to 12 times a day while the average mobile user checks her device's home screen at least 100 times a day.
Click Image To Enlarge
ClickZ spoke with a pair of marketers and a mobile phone analyst who readily see what Facebook is after with a more immersive, always-connected-to-Facebook experience, but none of them think Facebook has done enough with Home to disrupt and make gains in the smartphone space as it has in social networking.
Avi Greengart, research director of consumer devices at Current Analysis, says.
"This isn't as scary as it could have been for some of the players...in terms of what this actually does versus what a true Facebook phone could have been."
He tells ClickZ.
"I like the fact that they are not building a phone…Facebook doesn't need a phone. Companies that have tried social-oriented phones, including HTC and Microsoft, have failed and failed hard."
Greengart believes Facebook Home will primarily appeal to socially centric users who want more from Facebook, not less. He says.
"They didn't just build an app. They built a product launcher that sort of takes over your whole phone and gives you Facebook first, but it does take over your phone and that's a lot for even someone who loves Facebook."
Cameron Yuill, founder and chief executive of mobile marketing agency AdGent Digital, also has doubts about the success of Facebook Home. Nonetheless he says.
"Maybe I'm not the demographic that really cares that much about making it such an important part of my life where it's on the home screen, but there certainly are people who want to spend their whole life on Facebook."
Adam Kleinberg, chief executive of digital agency Traction, was hoping for more from Facebook. He says.
"It feels like a lack of vision…like something that they've rushed to market. Just having a new home screen falls short of having a new operating system, and my hope was for an evolution, not an incremental step."
Kleinberg says.
"It's all about this one screen that gives you access rather than reinventing what a mobile phone should be, and I think Facebook is in a position to do that."
Facebook Home doesn't appear to have any immediate impact on advertising, but Kleinberg and Yuill already have a good idea of how Facebook plans to make money off its colossal efforts on mobile.
Yuill says.
"I think what typically will happen is for a while it'll be content that you'll see on your screen, and that'll be great. Then because of the inevitable pressure of making revenue, you'll see ads."
He says.
"There no reason why they wouldn't start taking over that real estate as well. It's a no-brainer from an advertisers' point of view…and I think it's going to be welcome. But that doesn't matter at the end of the day, because the consumer gets run over whenever there's a buck to be made."
Kleinberg says.
"It's probably premature for them to introduce ads on a new thing."
But he believes Graph Search is a "big indicator of where they see their future potential" on mobile and beyond.
Yuill says.
"I think the biggest opportunity for them will be location. Location becomes a huge factor in putting ads in front of you, and because it's your home screen you can do it then and there."
COMMENTARY: Facebook Home is not about providing users easy access to Facebook or providing a better experience, but to keep users permanently anchored to Facebook so that the social giant can bombard them with ads. It's about pure power and control. To be sure, there will be a contingent of very loyal, highly addicted Facebook users, who will love Home, but the vast majority of Facebook users do not have a love affair with Facebook that runs that deep. Many will eventually tire of seeing Facebook Home each and everytime they turn on their smartphone. In the long run this may backfire on Facebook, because users could become bored with Facebook or speedup Facebook fatigue. I love Twitter and Google+, but I doubt I would allow either of them to handcuff my smartphone screen, just they can blast ads at me.
In bulk, users have posted some variation of this phrase:
“Installed Facebook Home; Un-installed it 3 minutes later.”
That uncertainty might spring from the fact that Facebook Home represents a big change for Android users, whether they love the software or hate it. Facebook Home is tailored to please the most avid Facebook users. In the thread on the Android subReddit a.k.a. a forum for diehard Android fans commenter’s’ seemed to love the Facebook messenger app update, and feel vaguely ambivalent about everything else.
Chat heads in new messenger are awesome. It looks simply great and everything is smooth enough. Redditor replied saying that Thank God he doesn’t use the Facebook home to use the chat heads.
On Twitter, the account Android Headlines, which tweets news for Android obsessive, asked followers if they’d downloaded the new software yet. The Facebook Home app had earned the perfectly middling score of 2.4 out of 5 with just over 750 reviews. There are, notably, far more one-star ratings than five-star ones, with most critics echoing the complaint that they like Facebook, but not enough to give their widgets and home screen over to it completely. This kind of criticism may win out in the end. Per Android Police, a tech news blog, the software’s star-rating has only dropped lower since Facebook released the software.
Courtesy of an article dated April 9, 2013 appearing in ClickZ and an article dated April 16, 2013 appearing in USMarketBuzz.com
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