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To echo a complaint that is common when designers show off prototypes/imagined-redesigns...what does all this look like when your friends aren't as attractive/good at photography? I'm talking about the Cover Feed function. In the life stage I am now, I'd say that my Facebook Phone would be showing random baby photos 80% of the time, food photos 10% of the time.

I'm also curious how that feature interacts with what I've observed to be normal FB usage. When I want to post a status, I post a status. When I post photos, it's usually as a batch, not many with captions. I think that's how most people do instagrams too.

So, if you have a home screen feed focused on your newsfeed...how will statuses be "attractive" looking? Using the user's default cover image? But those are extremely horizontal. The only newsfeed entities that contribute beautiful photos with substantial text that are in my newsfeed are companies and brands (OK, and George Takei).

I had the same thought. I'd also have too many grainy, out-of-focus pics of my younger brothers doing shots. And don't forget "meme" pictures. That would be lovely.

This was my first thought. Facebook did a great job at making it look fantastic but in reality, my experience would probably look much different (poor quality photos, memes, spam posts, etc).

Random baby photos and food - I'd say you could do a lot worse.

You, apparently, aren't getting a whole facebook feed full of baby photos. It gets old fast. People really embrace this whole "circle of life" motif.

Does a picture of someone's feet on a beach with a comment that "it doesn't get any better than this!" qualify as worse?

Wait 'til the toddler figures out how to take pictures.

Last week would have been pretty annoying -- every single little circle would have contained the exact same red and pink equal sign. The image would have been absolutely useless as any sort of UI indicator. Perhaps this will encourage people to use pictures of themselves for their profile pictures? Might be a chicken/egg situation though.

The reality is, this rarely occurs and really isn't that bothersome.

We've been building Frontpage - a similar product for making RSS, news and social feeds all available from the Lock Screen - for a few months now. Same idea, no inputting passwords. No fumbling through multiple apps. Just easy access to your content.

http://www.frontpageapp.com

Shameless plug, eh? I don't think your product really showcases how most Facebook photos are poor quality since you pull news images as well. I know most of the pictures in my feed are some that I don't give two cares about.

Cool concept, by the way!

This is HackerNews, of course the plug comes first :)

In answer to your question though, yes, quality is not a guarantee. Luckily Facebook has its own built in ranking system - are your friends commenting on the picture? If so, it will probably be worth viewing regardless of image quality

Got this when I attempted to install it:

"This item cannot be installed in your device's country."

Well for starters, where do you live? Let me know where you're at and we can fix this for you.

Google Play requires that you list the countries that you would like your app to be available in. We kept our list relatively short for our beta release, which is effectively what you're trying to download.

I’ve heard that this was a concern when Graph Search was being developed, and that the query they used in testing to find people with crappy profile pics was “people who like Insane Clown Posse”.

Quick, sure-fire "unfriend" test:

My friends who like Nickelback

https://www.facebook.com/search/6248267085/likers/me/friends...

Don't forget all the "Like if you hate cancer, ignore if you love Hitler" pictures.

Then again, marketing doesn't really work when you show the reality of the product. The Wii probably wouldn't have sold as well if the ads showed people slouched on the couch in their underwear rather than fit, active people with Big White Smiles.

s/Smiles/Smiles™/

Such images litter my Facebook news feed. I remember FB must have used me as an involuntary beta tester, because one day the news feed for me was replaced with just newly uploaded photos by friends. It was beautiful, it was actually about my friends, it was wonderful. I would love it if Facebook would make that a feature proper, because the URL for that feed only worked once for me.

If Facebook is ranking content such that that's all you see your feed, then Facebook as a whole would be less appealing anyway, let alone Home.

I'm guessing there's more to your feed than babies and food and that othe content is ranked higher due to your aversion of then.

Well you could try making some attractive new friends.

That has MVP written all over it. "Friend me and we'll inject awesome, and tasteful, photos into your photo stream."

And then you set all your other friends to not show up on the home screen? This has to be the most roundabout way possible for making your home screen a slideshow of random nature photos. I love it.

This would be like a 20-30 mil acquisition right here.

Perhaps similar to this?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/05/fake-facebo...

I guess it's a good time to post pictures of my junk to Facebook, then?

Just unfriend them. Life's too short.

That assumes the need for high quality distracting content is greater than the psychological effort of unfriending.

I like that this is a first world problem.

or uncheck "Show in News Feed."

I don't even want to know the ratio of people I'm friends with vs. people I actually see in my feed. Probably 1 in 10 at this point.

More significantly, how do ensure I don't flash someone's inappropriate party pictures at work?

If your workplace is one that you wouldn't feel comfortable with a quick flash of anything that might be on Facebook, you shouldn't be on Facebook.

It's not a sterile environment and you can't control what's there. Either employers will understand that and not care that you're on Facebook during a short break, or they won't understand and will be upset that you're on Facebook in the first place.

If Facebook is your phone's home screen, it is hard to not be "on Facebook" for a second.

It's not hard to not make facebook your home screen.

Is it hard to make facebook your home screen for part of the time? That'd be pretty cool, hit a button to give your phone a huge facelift* as you walk out the office door each evening, or set it to switch automatically at 5pm and back at 9am.

*if you see what I did there.

It definitely would be possible by combining something like Tasker (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch....) with a custom application that swaps the home screen. Some of them automation apps support a scripting language too, so it might be possible without the custom app.

Sure, but the topic of the post is Facebook creating a home screen. If you find it inappropriate at work, then I guess you just don't use it at all, and you are not the target audience for the application.

I'll be honest FB is blocked at work so I couldn't read the OP.

That being said, I would imagine this is an optional thing..

His point is that while he's not intentionally on Facebook looking at questionable pictures, it's now on the lock screen of his phone, which he can't avoid if he needs to use it.

I'm sure like many things that are touted as essential and central features in the FB world, it will eventually have a switch to disable the feature. It's probably too much to ask for FB to implement a location-based control for its showiness.

Sounds like he isn't a good candidate to use this particular app. Seems pretty clear a younger audience is going to be the core demographic for this product. College aged and younger who spend tons of time on facebook and socializing in general and typically do not have office jobs where "work appropriate" is even a concern.

That seems a bit illogical though as it's the people with jobs that have the money that advertisers are gunning for.

There was a time when I'd say the HS & college students soon will have jobs. Now I'm not so sure about that.

"If your workplace is one that you wouldn't feel comfortable with a quick flash of anything that might be on Facebook, you shouldn't be on Facebook."

Quite a few people use Facebook at work. Theoretically Facebook wants to keep them as customers.

The default view of the feed is actually highly filtered. One of the strongest signals it uses is the posts you like and comment on. So if you don't want to see baby pictures, food, etc. then make sure not to comment on those posts. :) It's pretty easy to go to a party, get a few new facebook friends, and comment on their pages regularly so facebook thinks they are your close circle to show you posts from.

"what does all this look like when your friends aren't as attractive/good at photography"

That's why Instagram was so important. We'll just slather on filters till things either look better or imperceptible as human.

I showed my girlfriend this app. Her first words were "That is dangerous. How much do I just want to post pictures of dicks for everyone with that app"

While not my first thought (I had baby photos etc come up in my mind), to be fair, if this app does gain any traction, inappropriate photobombing people's phones will become a thing - and that's not good for Facebook.

If they really stood behind the product and wanted you to see it for real, the landing pages would have used your real FB content if you were logged in.

> In the life stage I am now, I'd say that my Facebook Phone would be showing random baby photos 80% of the time, food photos 10% of the time.

and 10% cats :)

I've noticed posting single photos is becoming much more popular - it went from 'posting 50 photos of the party last night' to 'here's a photo of what I'm doing now'. I'd say it's a result of people simultaneously getting phones which work as reasonable cameras, and better data signals which allow instant sharing - you're not sharing lots of photos after the fact (once you copy photos from your camera to your PC), you're sharing a photo as it happens.

This is a significant feature of Instagram also - because every single photo is a new story, you only share one photo at a time - Instagram is built on sharing your best photos, rather than all the photos from an event.

I've always wondered this myself. I'd love to see someone with video editing skills put some of the low res crappy meme and self shots that appear on most facebook feeds.

I take issue with the problem statement: "today, phones are built around tasks and apps. To see what's happening with your friends, you pull out your phone and navigate through a series of separate apps."

Firstly, the value to me in owning a smartphone and paying the charges associated with it is ultimately task orientated - from running my business, to getting driving directions, to wanting to play a specific genre of music at the gym. That's actually where the value is in my phone. Maybe I don't fit the demographic, but I don't want those to become second-class citizens over friend communications.

Secondly, it's very hollow to define the problem as 'your friend's activities are spread across multiple apps' when their solution only promotes Facebook activity to the fore.

My FB friend's activity is currently only contained in one app - the FB app. Their solution only removes the checking of multiple apps because those other apps (non-FB social networks, IM networks, etc) are going to be relegated into obscurity and no longer top of mind.

How's that ultimately helpful to my real, technology agnostic, friendships?

Well, it wouldn't be very professional for them to just come right out and say, "Say goodbye to the days of checking your Twitter feed separately by no longer using Twitter!"

"Maybe I don't fit the demographic, but I don't want [task-orientation] to become second-class citizens over friend communications."

You're not their demographic. Phones are still a primarily social technology for most people. The most popular features, voice calls, text messaging, and possibly email, revolve around people.

P.S. I know several people who friend news sources and bloggers and use Fb as an ersatz RSS feed, mitigating the death-by-cat-pictures eventuality.

I think you're confusing social interactions and socializing, which are quite different in intent. While socializing requires social interaction, it's not the other way around, and social media feeds off of socializing.

Perhaps I'm not in the demographic either, since a majority of my call and email usage is not based in any form of socializing. Texting, somewhat more, but I do little texting, and when I do it's usually just for logistical purposes -- "meet you at 6pm at FooBar" -- which also isn't socializing.

The target segment is quite evident from the splash page that says, and yes this is my serious face, "Get right to Facebook, Instagram and other essentials".

I agree with the basic core of what they're saying- apps are silos, especially on iOS. If they allow third parties to also push content to Facebook Home (and they've been friendly to third parties for a long time) the idea could yet be sound.

Yeah, I often see technology: news tickers, desktop widget, live tiles, full-screen apps, etc; that seem to assume that I'll be spending some significant amount of staring at a device waiting for it to ambiently present me information at a snails pace, while I just stand there doing nothing.

Even when I'm using social features of my app, my focus is - "I'll see what my friends are up to while I wait for coffee"; "I'll post something to keep in touch with people". I'm never going to get my phone out of my pocket, turn on the screen, and just stand there hoping that if I wait long enough it might tell me something interesting.

Sometimes, I hate being such a cynical person.

I see what appears to be a fine product, which adds a lot of desirable features for communication -- chat heads look especially nice -- but all I can really wonder is what else Facebook might be mining out of my phone usage that the regular Facebook App doesn't do already. Maybe they want to take over SMS messaging on the phone completely and route it through Facebook (centralized chat, it's not even unreasonable), or perhaps automatically upload everything and let you filter expoosed data after the fact (which is too late to trust that it's ever gone). When it comes pre-installed on the phone, they don't even have to ask for permission for everything.

These worries are true for anything you install on Android. This is just another app, just presente differently.

Consider the source. FB has much higher and invasive corporate and government connections who would love to use that data than the SuperGronk "just another app" game company does.

Why differentiate? I see FB as a phishing exercise, a specific app may be more like spearphishing.

Works for me. Phishing with a large number of beneficiaries.

How is that cynical? Facebook's primary product is data mining. You are what they're selling. Not your content (directly, at least.)

it might just be a hook to induce more people to install a facebook app and/or use facebook. i don't use the facebook app myself (as you say, i don't want facebook having access to my phone), but if i did i would see no real privacy reason not to use this one too.

Do any phones (other than the Nexus line) come without a Facebook app? It was pre-installed on my Sony Ericsson, and I can't even remove it without rooting.

This 'app' though, is much more. It takes over all your home screens, and the launcher, so if Facebook were data mining on it I believe they could have information about every application you have installed, when you use them etc. To my knowledge, apps don't get to look at that sort of stuff by default.

I've got a Samsung Galaxy Ace, bought in the UK late last year, that didn't (and still doesn't) have a facebook app.

I have a Samsung Note 2, from Verizone. While it came with a lot of apps I don't want (like the NHL app), it did not have the FB app.

Regardless of your thoughts on the actual Home product, this product page is incredibly well designed and thought out.

amazing design

Agreed, but it's also an interesting product. I'm around a lot of high school aged people, and they are incredibly social. They don't really use a lot of apps, just ones that help them do social things. Building a frontend around the social experience is a clear win for at least this age group. I could see it being a bad experience for me, but younger people will flock to this. They don't care about Android vs. iOS, but they will care about a direct improvement in how social is treated. I think this is a big win for FB.

But yes, very well designed product page, with good use of media. I don't waste time with video, but I was able to catch the experience anyway. That's rare in this age of "spend 5 minutes just sitting on this page".

Surprised they don't have a "notify me on Facebook when this is available" button

Yes I agree. Did you notice the clock widget even updates to the correct time in the "Get notifications where you need them" section?

It's pretty, but I left with no idea what exactly the product is.

It's a Facebook.

Same problem as ~4 years ago when people first saw the iPad: "What exactly is it?" "It's iPad." "How do I quantify it in my paradigm of notebook computers?" "You don't."

You're trying to quantify it as a smartphone. Facebook is positioning it as...well...a Facebook.

That seems like a somewhat poor example. When people first saw the iPad, it was quite rightly explained as "basically a big iPhone", which was completely sufficient to get an idea of the product.

I like your analogy. People have been talking about a "Facebook Phone" for years now, but Home actually makes a lot more sense than trying to compete directly by forking Android or building their own hardware. It feels like one of those ideas that seems so obvious after the fact that you wonder how you never thought of it.

No, because the iPad is pretty obvious: you touch to screen. I can't even tell what's going on. Is it replacement for the lock screen? But then what's up with the messenger? Why is there an ad for an htc phone, but it's also android.... It's just confusing what they are trying to communicate other than attractive people.

Frankly

It's just confusing what they are trying to communicate other than attractive people.

They aren't trying to communicate anything other than attractive people. The target market doesn't know or care what "htc" or "android" or "lock screen" etc are. The target market spends money to be attractive people.

It's basically a Facebook branded home screen. Instead of the regular home screen with a bunch of icons to launch different applications, the home screen is now essentially a Facebook application. There's also some stuff to access Facebook functionality (chat, etc.) while using other applications.

Did you try leaning in?

I mean, I gathered some things. And yes, I watched the large video (after some buffering issues) scrolled through the bullets of features and let it sink in.

I wasn't drawn in enough to read all of the text, but I did take in the headlines and subheadings. And form all of that I left with the impression that it was either:

a. some sort of app for Android (standalne) b. an OS (some kind of lite version of Android with just Facebook social features) and/or; c. a phone that Facebook were making with HTC;

... or some combination thereof.

I understand now that it's a homescreen replacement. But that certainly wasn't the impression I left with.

Seems to be a (sort of) Flipboard(like) OS(like) app

Agree, though is it actually much different from say http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/ ?

I would say it is. A hero animation carries much more information than a single image does.

for anyone else interested in what approach they were using for it:

Interesting; cinemagraph is a reference to a style of .gif animation popularized on tumblr and reddit's /r/cinemagraphs.

Isn't it weird that there are only girls in the video?

It's only natural - the home is the place for women :D

Flippant ironic sexism is still sexism.

Admonishments aside, anyone who took Marketing 101 can see that this product is clearly designed for socially adept women 18-30. Most clearly evident from the opening video, and Facebook's marketing team will be canny enough to know exactly what they are doing and who they want to reach.

What, we aren't even allowed to joke about sexism now?

No. Hacker News is serious business.

No, because offending someone is the very worst thing you can do in the world.

The problem, as with all sexist/racist/homophobic/etc jokes, is that even though you recognise that it's a joke, people who read it don't necessarily do so, and these kind of comments enable the people who believe this stuff to continue to say it, and to believe it's acceptable. When you're exposing your writing to potentially thousands of readers, you have to consider this.

It's how reddit went from joking ironically about sexism/racism/homophobia to now featuring pockets where that kind of thing thrives.

While I don't want to justify making these kind of jokes to your friends, it's very different when you're with five of your best mates who all recognise that you're joking and understand that that kind of comment is sexist, to saying that kind of thing on the internet.

This probably feels like an overreaction - I'm not offended by the comment, just trying to explain why having them is an issue.

Always wink it when it's a joke [0]

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poes_law

What about the sexism of Facebook's advertisement?

Huh? I don't get it.

Ok so now they can log every interaction you do on your phone. Look out for new permissions that you need to change the defaults to, or else your friends will see updates such as "Mongol just dialed his friend John". "Mongol is playing Wordfeud". "Mongol has an appointment with his dentist".

Thanks for all the great feedback. It's awesome to see how much everyone likes the site.

I was the designer and Nick Kwiatek (http://nkwiatek.com) built it. Elisabeth Carr wrote the content, Peter Jordan and Nate Salciccioli made the videos. It was definitely a team effort and feels great to be able to share it with everyone.

The one thing Facebook has taught me is that I'm far too ugly to use social media.

Me too. For me it would be called 'Facebook Homely'.

I think were all missing the point here, there's now a "facebook phone". For a certain demographic facebook is the most important thing on their phone. It doesn't really matter if home is a huge inovation or not, it only needs to be slightly better then iOS and Android for using facebook and this demo will adopt it.

Facebook is opening up a new market for themselves and with a phone for $99 its very easy for someone to say "mommy I want the facebook phone" and get it.

Soon "facebook phone" will start appearing alongside "iphone", "droid", and "windows phone" as common vernacular. By partnering with att & htc and building on top of android they have now gained access into the cell phone industry with no investment in hardware, cell towers or in creating a new OS, just redesigning a home screen.

Theres a huge potential upside with very little risk involved. Its a good move on facebooks part.

"By partnering with att & htc and building on top of android they have now gained access into the cell phone industry with no investment in hardware, cell towers or in creating a new OS, just redesigning a home screen."

There's always a flip-side to this argument though, and that is that by not heavily investing, there really are pretty low barriers to entry for other tech companies with means.

What prevents Twitter or Google from releasing the exact same thing and then splitting this market proportionally to the market for social networks/new sites in general? I rarely use Facebook so this release has little utility for me. I fully understand I'm not representative of everyone and that there are many teenage girls who will fall over themselves to install it when it comes out.

But if Twitter or even Yahoo released a similar product, I have to believe I would be a lot more likely to install it. This to me just seems like a spruced-up notification system for Facebook. I don't really think it adds a whole lot to their bottom line or site usage.

I think what Facebook are going for here makes a lot of sense.

The home screen at the moment is a fork in the road with the choice of dozens of different app paths to take. What they're planning on doing is removing the extra step needed to start interacting with the content.

It's similar to how they changed the original facebook app. Instead of starting by presenting all the options of which part of facebook you wanted to go to (profile/photos/newsfeed/messages etc.) it instead went straight into the news feed.

This presumably could work just as well with the whole phone. Although my concern is that facebook is only a small subset of my sources of interesting information on mobile. It seems highly limiting for it to only show facebook app content. Maybe there's a possible opportunity for a competing, open 'home screen' app to bring it all in.

This takes what Windows Phone did with People hub and applies it to the whole phone instead of restricting it to an area of the phone. Of course people hub brought over people from twitter, linkedin, etc. as well so is much more comprehensive than this.

I think the biggest thing for me is that my smartphone has always been a "private" thing for me, a place where I can choose to interact with people, or spend hours playing Angry Birds.

With this phone, I'm forced into an environment where I feel like I need to be social all the time, and I feel that might wear on a lot of people.

"With this phone, I'm forced into an environment where I feel like I need to be social all the time"

I think this was probably a user story for them and definitely one of their biggest motivations, unfortunately lol.

Oh yeah, it's not a question of "user that doesn't want to be social", I'm sure their stories are more centered around "how to enforce social behavior and destroy the concept of temporary isolation and privacy in this particular demographic".

I don't install non-work IM programs on my desktops anymore because I found that an 'online' status typically denoted to people that I'm available to talk. It got to a point where my wife was even pinging me too often. Then I just put it on unavailable/offline all the time and then what's the point of having it in the first place?

I think the younger generation doesn't have an expectation of non-invasiveness yet. They just aren't doing anything important enough to be bothered when interrupted. I think that changes when you get a little older.

"I think the younger generation doesn't have an expectation of non-invasiveness yet. They just aren't doing anything important enough to be bothered when interrupted. I think that changes when you get a little older."

I'm 27 and this rings true for me. I use to have IM enabled all the time, and work on some things in the background.

That's no good for things I'm doing now, and I rarely chat idly on IM.

> I don't install non-work IM programs on my desktops anymore because I found that an 'online' status typically denoted to people that I'm available to talk.

With the exception of Facebook Chat, that is the purpose of the Online status. There's (busy/your client's name for it) for "I'm here, but may not be able to reply". And offline for when you're actually not available. If it wasn't for Skype's terrible offline messaging implementation, I'd have said that 90% of the time offline or busy implies you should probably close the IM client.

(Facebook is different because afaict, there's no way to manually put it into the away state, it just does it if you haven't interacted with Facebook in a while)

"From the moment you turn it on, you see a steady stream of friends’ posts and photos."

Sounds like a self-flagellation device for masochists.

"Upfront notifications and quick access to your essentials mean you’ll never miss a moment."

Except for most of what's important, which you will miss unless you put that phone down.

"And you can keep chatting with friends, even when you’re using other apps."

Please kill me.

On the page design: I'm not as impressed as many of the commenters here. It's nonresponsive and requires horizontal scrolling.

I think this is going to suck. And I think that because Facebook apparently doesn't have any engineers who do "plumbing" - uninteresting work that's necessary.

The core Facebook app still has a software menu button pop up, because they're not targeting a remotely recent build of Android. There is not a single jellybean-style rich notification anywhere to be found. The MediaUploadService doesn't stop itself if media upload is turned off, and it shouldn't even be on because android 4.x broadcasts an intent when a picture is taken anyway.

As we saw in a post about a month ago, monkey patching dalvik is sexy and interesting to work on - the fact that their codebase is so convoluted that they have to is a symptom of sloppy engineering.

Facebook is so obsessed about telling me what my friends do, when i meet them, whats there to talk about? I think we are getting to a point where the digital social networks are ruining the actual social networks; the actual social network is just diluted. Just my opinion.

Great point. Facebook doesn't offer a lot of value to it's users and that's a fact.

"Man I went this place.." "Yeah, I saw it on your Facebook..."

Just looked at all the videos. I wanted to like this but I'm really unimpressed. I don't understand why anyone would install this.

All my friends seem to be using Facebook less and less and this seems to be another way to lock me into Facebook's ecosystem. While they could easily allow you to contact your friends in all the ways which you normally communicate with them - SMS, Email, Phone, the only thing they integrated in was Facebook messages.

By making this, they are basically saying that people want something in their hand which provides them random information they can swipe to. People want this random info soo sooo much, they we've made it the home screen + doing anything in apps is the exception.

No Wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

In its present form, where I risk my SoHo friends' strip poker party greeting the workplace every time I whip out my phone, Home targets Facebook'a beachhead of college students.

Adding geographic and temporal modality, e.g. enabling Home if I am not at the office and it is not between 9AM and 6PM on a weekday, would broaden its appeal.

What if it blurred the background images during work hours? Or maybe just images with flesh tones detected.

Wow, it feels like I'm looking at a product page on Apple's website. Pretty.

Apple's product page is pretty generic these days. This is very pretty indeed though, especially the text over the video.

Is a Dyson vacuum cleaner generic, because other companies have started making similar models?

The design has become generic, yes. That's what generic means: "pertaining or appropriate to large classes or groups as opposed to specific."

So when everyone starts copying the design of this Facebook page, the page will become generic? I somehow doubt that’s what parent was alluding to. I read ‘generic’ as an euphemism for ‘unoriginal’, which Apple product pages definitely aren’t.

Yeah I think this is much nicer than an Apple product page.

The greatest benefit of a facebook phone to me has nothing to do with photos, status updates, etc (although I am likely in the minority). Facebook, to me, has become an address book of all of my friends, with contact information that updates itself when it changes.

If facebook replaced my address book with my facebook friends list, and texting and calling to them "just worked", hopefully using facebook-to-facebook over Wifi when available, it would be a great phone.

I've heard others say something similar in regards to their contacts. What do you do when you are not friends with someone? Just curious as I don't use Facebook often.

You can do that with the current facebook android app, in theory. I haven't tried it, but it claims to be able to do it.

do you really have that many friends who put all of their contact information on their facebook profiles?

Looks like their pre-order page (http://www.att.com/facebookhome) is 404ing.

On topic - I personally wouldn't use this. Facebook belongs as an app. More integration is (almost) always nice, but I really don't need a phone dedicated to the social network - I'd prefer to move farther away from it.

I could not help but notice one of their Cover feed screenshots showing an advert -- http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v2/yY/r/fNNR8sV8Y3W.png .

OK, this one I think I get. Why have full-screen standby ads only on Kindle?

That isn't an advertisement. People legitimately want content from Pages to show up in their news feed. If it was an advertisement, it would say "Sponsored".

But yes, ads are not out of the question in the future.

When you can't own the hardware chain the next best thing is creating a virus masquerading as a platform.

I'm skeptical that some of what winds up on the FB home screen won't include some form of advertising.

This. Facebook has a problem on mobile devices. A great number of users use them but the real estate for advertising is greatly diminished. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next iteration, ads of some kind will pop up. In fact its probably the entire reason for this project.

No need to be skeptical, Facebook has already said they will put advertising on your home screen (it was a question from the press.)

You can see an example of it on their page even: http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v2/yY/r/fNNR8sV8Y3W.png

"Keep receiving our ads, even when you're using other apps." ;)

Facebook is some form of advertising. So don't be skeptical, be certain.

I was interested until I heard they'll be putting ads on my lock screen.

Time to give up Google.

What new privacy holes will this introduce? I wonder if the facebook home will be constantly monitoring your location, recording app usage, grabbing your text messages, etc. Basically, are you surrendering the rest of your phone data to facebook?

At what point can an empty space no longer be considered a hole?

What happens to Facebook when the original generation of users have kids and those kids see Facebook as their parent's social network?

I've read articles talking about young ones already being bored with FB because of this.. and it only tends to get worse, nicely remembered ;D

They use their existing technology platform to launch a new brand. Or else they just keep buying small new social networks as they gain popularity, like Instagram.

Why don't they fix Facebook on android before releasing a new product? It frequently "shooooops" for me - crashes, lags, hogs resources, and otherwise does unexpected things.

I'm very wary to install any software from Facebook on Android.

Anyone notice how the main video on that page is almost exclusively women using the app? Guess that's linking in to the idea others have quoted here about the attractiveness factor of the photos in question.

Given that Facebook listed "Mobile" as a major risk to their future [1], this seems like a proportionate response. It seems like every tech giant wants the be at the top of the heap, to control software that is as close to the user as possible. In this case Google Glass looks pretty smart, you can't get any closer than a quarter inch away from my eyeball.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/05/09/facebook-t...

Everyone in that video seems to be having fun. Must be good.

The design of the production page is nice though. The video mast is kind of what I've been waiting for for a long time. It's nicely implemented.

The source reveals that the video mast is actually an animated gif (or cinemagraph, as these tasteful creations are also known as). The stutter in the beginning kind of gives it away, but still quite impressive they included such a long edit and got it to load relatively fast (coming from reddit where uncompressed gifs run amok).

> or cinemagraph, as these tasteful creations are also known as

Just so you know, this is not a cinemagraph. A cinemagraph is not just a synonym for "high-quality animated gif". A cinemagraph isolates one moving part from an otherwise static picture (and the assumption is that at least some motion is frozen - ie, not everything that could be moving is moving).

It's kind of like spot-color[0], but for motion.

Lots of good examples: http://iwdrm.tumblr.com/

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spot_color

Facebook is calling it a cinemegraph (see the HTML snippet in sibling commment) as part of their comprehensive war to redefine every word in the English language to be something of theirs.

For me it's a <video> element, which kind of makes more sense.

    <video style="display: block;" class="_534g" id="fbhome-cinemagraph" autoplay="1" loop="1">
        <source src="https://fbcdn-dragon-a.akamaihd.net/cfs-ak-ash3/676434/970/135351913305575_544816858.mp4">
        <source src="https://fbcdn-dragon-a.akamaihd.net/cfs-ak-prn1/676663/942/135351913305575_1958437471.ogv">
        <img class="_53ol _53ol img" src="https://fbcdn-dragon-a.akamaihd.net/cfs-ak-ash3/676513/617/135351913305575_1421925707.jpg" alt="">
    </video>

I got a <video> tag as well. Firefox on Mac OS X.

Could you perhaps screenshot what you're seeing or paste a code sample? I'm seeing the same thing as cocoflunchy, just a <video> element, no gif.

Well, on second look it seems like the mast is using <video> for me as well- I originally looked too far and thought the id "fbhome-cinemagraph-canary" led to an animated gif. Apologies on making the wrong call!

Also, as a previous reply pointed out, what they're doing really doesn't count as a cinemagraph- FB needs to stop butchering words.

I have my doubts about the launcher and would much rather have Twitter take on the endeavor given I derive much more utility from its network (highlighting stories on my Twitter feed seem a lot more relevant in practice when it comes to things I care about having on my phone's lock screen), but Facebook did one hell of a job with this product landing page. Props to their design team. (Ah! The video header! It's so pretty! And not a single man in sight!)

How long before the app starts showing ads on your home screen?

> "There are no ads in this yet, I'm sure that one day there will be," said Mark Zuckerberg when asked about how Facebook Home would make money. [1]

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/4/4183688/facebook-will-put-a...

I'd give it a year.

Funny how the video contains only women... <sarcasm> like if facebook was the only site most women would go on</sarcasm> :)

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at but it's weird to me too. You never know what lead to that decision (target markets, promotional video production issues, or maybe they just wanted to play off the "girl at home on the phone with friends" archetype) but it is odd.

Yes I get your point, mine was simply that they seem to really target women, for whatever reason :)

Next thing you know, your phone homescreen is showing a full-size ad. Clever.

I like Android intents and all, but I think Facebook is misguided if their plan is to release a new version of Home every month. The intent preference is only remembered for the same version of the app... that means if they choose to update the version the user will be asked if they want to launch the intent with Facebook Home again ("Just Once" / "Always").

You've got this problem (wether this behavior is an actual problem or a benefit to the user is open for debate) no matter what if you rely on being a default Intent in any way. What do you expect them to do, never update again?

Not at all... just less frequently

Facebook already knew this, that's one of the reasons why AT&T and HTC are included in this project, for HTC first device they will install it as system app which will avoid this problem.

Collaborating with HTC and AT&T allows them to install 'Home' as system app in future devices, this will allow their app to add 'layers' on top of any app. This can only be done if device is rooted or app is installed as system app.

Ok here's my two cents.

-It does look great. But I'm also curious as to what will happen if my friends are not good photographers. How about when they post pictures of what they have eaten?

-I most likely take my phone out of my pocket more than a hundred times each day, they got that part right. Sometimes I just use the phone screen to check the date and time. Sometimes to check if someone has called me or texted me/mailed me. If I'm the only one who checks his phone's screen in order to learn the time, then this is probably a moot point. If not, it's going to be annoying.

-It's all good and dandy to be connected to my friends all the time but I use my phone for what it was meant for, phoning other people. It's very rare that I take my phone out of my pocket to check up on friends through social media. If I want to check up on people, I call them. If I want to do it over facebook or similar, I use the apps.

-Ads. It's most likely get ugly and annoying, fast.

"How about when they post pictures of what they have eaten? [...] It's very rare that I take my phone out of my pocket to check up on friends through social media."

If your friends are posting pictures of what used to be something that they've eaten, it's not surprising that you rarely want to check up on that stuff.

A variant of this idea was implemented by Motorola on some of their phones (which I used for a few weeks before returning it). I forget what it was called ...motoblur? The concept was pretty neat but it drained battery like nothing else. I wonder what the battery implications of Home are.

Didn't the Microsoft Kin also integrate as such?

Does this remind anyone else of the ill conceived Motorola Rokr? http://img.iguor.com/2012/11/112752-apple-ceo-jobs-introduce...

How? Because you think it's Facebook's stalking horse? Or because you think Home is going to flop like the ROKR?

Facebook, like Google, has the goal of getting users to use their service more - as they are an advertising platform. Google Glass means people will search more - when they're away from the computer. Google investing in better internet means people will have quicker connections, which means they'll again means they'll be searching more.

Here, by increasing the likelihood people are engaged/interested in Facebook status events, Facebook will drive users back to their core platform, whether it's their core app or the desktop version - where they will, indeed, get more impressions for their advertisers. I doubt they are dumb enough, though, to actually do this through the home screen of our phones.

I'd like to point out that this is the first Android phone which didn't emphasize the logos and manufacture. Most Androids have a horrible cluttered physical design, partly because manufactures slap their logo right on the front.

The Google Nexus line is also clutter-free:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Nexus#Comparison_of_phon...

Regardless about how you feel about the actual functionality here, as an entrepreneur you have to be impressed with Facebook's ability to continually ratchet up engagement year after year after year.

This falls into what I'd categorize as "solving the easy problems". It's something that companies do all the time. And sometimes it's worthwhile, but often it means that a company doesn't understand the business it's in very well and doesn't have a clue how to innovate.

Personally I believe that there is a huge amount of room for improvement and innovation in social, and when I see a company like facebook merely working on the "make it prettier and easier" aspect I can't help but wonder how long until a disruptor wrecks their world.

I think Facebook home won't be disruptive. There is so much more that goes into marketing and selling consumer products.

Home is a good win-win deal for facebook and HTC. Facebook can collect valuable social data from mobile devices and optimize ad delivery for users of that phone. HTC has the ability to use Home as a way to differentiate its phone in a very crowded market where the average consumer sees little differentiation between different smart phones outside of the iphone.

It turns your Android phone into Facebook. I'm amused by the App Launcher description: "Get right to Facebook, Instagram and other essentials". Because the only reason I use technology for social media things...

But to be fair there might be a certain demographic for which this makes sense. And in many ways it's a lot like what Microsoft is trying to do with Windows Phone (but I don't know how successful that is).

The product seems pretty cool even though I'd never use it.

The site says $99, however, upon clicking preorder, we see it costs $450 without a contract. AT&T of course says, "*Requires 2-yr contract with qualifying voice and data plans. Activation fee applies." So this cool little idea just got a whole lot more expensive.

I say wait for the rom to leak, and then dual boot it on a new Nexus 4.

UPDATE: Sorry, I misread, this is just an overlay. Still though, the point still stands.

It isn't a rom. It's a launcher. You can download and install it from Google Play.

Based on what I read, the launcher is not available on Nexus 4. I don't get why Facebook Home doesn't support a stock Android.

I wouldn't give >1% of my battery power to an app like this, especially coming from Facebook. Back when I used the Facebook app and Facebook it drained too much of the battery.

Now if feedly launches something like this, where the photos and content come from RSS feeds, you can sign me up for beta testing. You could take over and kill Chameleon, Apex, Go, and Trebuchet easily.

Branding suggestion for competitors: "A grownup's Phone" for any phone that does NOT have facebook on your start/home screen.

Related announcement @ http://newsroom.fb.com/News/597/Introducing-Home (HN discussion @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5493993).

I wonder if this will exacerbate the problem of people looking at their phones while driving.

why would it?

Now you don't have to fumble with any buttons, there's something interesting on your home screen all the time so it's more tempting to take a quick look. I don't have a smart phone so I don't know if the home thing really changes anything.

I think it really is bad news for Apple... if more such stuff starts coming exclusively on Android, then it is bad for Apple. And very good for Google. (posting this to get some insight, not to initiate ugly debate among Apple/Google fan-boys)

I'm not so sure about that. Hijacking Android like Facebook does it, might mean trouble for Google. Google's revenue comes from advertisement in their products. If you use an app to rebrand the smart phone, so people won't use Google services anymore (and won't see ads), that's very troublesome for Google.

Google is not earning money with Android. Facebook is kind of backstabbing Google, in my opinion.

Looking at the App, I don't get why I should install it or what the advantage is over using the normal Facebook App ... then again I don't use Facebook that much.

We'll see how it will play out.

What a landing page. Almost makes me want to start using Facebook again. Now, this is the step before Facebook forks android, and builds their own apps store. And then they build their own signature phone, then a tablet, and so on...

Facebook are trying to do to Android what Google is doing with Chrome to the desktop.

With the difference that Facebook's efforts help Android compete against iOS (at least for the moment) while Chrome is agnostic between Windows and OS X.

Could someone who is really excited about this talk about their enthusiasm?

This is going to be so cool when I hang out with my hipster friends.

A few of my own thoughts and observations. Content (from your friends that you see) really is king. http://bit.ly/10CinIx

Is anyone here aware of a "chat heads" like chat UI for desktop computing? Seems like there is nothing about the idea that makes it only a good design on mobile platforms.

Lot of False Likes will happen - due to low quality phones..double tap means a like.. it will be the biggest concern for mobile users with facebook home installed

I imagine Facebook has already considered this problem and it is not a big concern (and likes are their ad business, so they want lots of likes, but real likes to better target ads)...

First, I'd imagine a second double tap will instantly unlike something or something similar to that nature. Secondly, users will just get used to the feature and work with it.

This looks pretty neat. I might end up installing it just to avoid using the abomination that is the official Facebook for Android app.

Link to pre-order giving anyone else a 404?

Yep

Despite the fact that I feel weird about Facebook making a phone, I have to say this page is awesome!

Pre-order link is broken

http://www.att.com/facebookhome

how can they afford that to happen?

It matches the home page on http://facebook.com/home, which is also down.

So basically, this seems like a widget to me. What am I missing?

That it is not at widget, but a launcher. Widgets and launchers have very different behaviour on Android.

This looks awesome.

Home? Home is where my heart is. So among other thing, that means it's where facebook isn't.

Ugly on the outside, even more ugly on the inside -- what's not to ignore, until you burn it down?

What if my FB account will be disabled? ;-)

Doesn't look like its for anyone over 30.

Why would you say that, other than concern of privacy(if at all) and if so, why it(privacy concern) would be confined to just the 30+?

I was speaking of the usage of models...of course privacy is everyone's concern ;).

Wild Palms here we go.

scary.

Facebook is so dull :/

Did Facebook just jump the shark?

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