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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

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.

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...

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...

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.

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.

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).

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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 :)

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.

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

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