When Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook home a few weeks ago there was nothing but good intentions and happy faces swarming the room. This long awaited announcement was supposed to show everyone how incredibly innovative Facebook could still be and that it was indeed in a standby while producing something new and incredible in secret. Well, the public waited and last week finally met Facebook Home. The reception has been shockingly negative. So, the question must be asked, why so much hatred for Facebook Home? After all, it is a Facebook product and everything Facebook touches seems to turn to gold in some sort of technology related Midas touch. Let’s get the breakdown of what went wrong.
The first thing to notice when looking at Facebook Home is the download page on the Google Play Store. This is the hub of activity for the app to every user that has it. Notably, the download number is quite high for only having been out a short period of time, and on a limited number of devices at over 500,000 installs. This shows promise, but when you look at how much app has been rated any promises quickly go to the wayside. It has an average user rating of between 1 and 2 stars. This is a shockingly low average for such a large scale advertisement backed app, by such a massive developer.
So what happened? Facebook is kind of not getting the point. To be innovative they need to change up what they are doing and what they can offer. If a peanut company just keeps repackaging their peanuts into different boxes and packets it doesn’t make the peanuts any better. This is essentially what Facebook does with their timeline reconfigurations and now with Facebook Home. It doesn’t change the same Facebook content and format that we’ve had and are growing bored of after years now. Just as the peanut company invents peanut butter cups, peanut brittle and flavored peanuts, Facebook needs to delve into it’s own new endeavors with NEW areas of content and new offerings to the public that we will actually like. Allowing paid messages to people and gifts to people means nothing in saving Facebook’s reputation.
So why do people hate Facebook Home? Pretty much because it is nothing new. It offers no new experience to Facebook other than having your entire home screen which could be filled with apps and widgets that you need with a constant stream of Facebook’s updates which you could just as easily get through an app.
Will Facebook Home recover from this awful start, not in my eyes, but only time will tell. If you can, go check out Facebook Home today and see what you think of this newest venture.
Google Play Store: Facebook Home App
Because it turns your Android phone into one that has even less features than an iPhone.