Facebook Home over a week later: only 500K installs with a two-star user rating | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Home over a week later: only 500K installs with a two-star user rating

venturebeat.com

97 pointsantr84 comments

The 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.

>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.

I 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.

Even 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.

A 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.

Yeah, there must be lots of people like that. I'm just comparing it to Facebook app which has 3,5 rating (which I'm sure lots of haters 1-star it too but still end up with acceptable rating)

I mentioned this downthread, but Google unlike, say, Amazon doesn't let you rate things you haven't downloaded/purchased. If these really are protest votes, that would mean users are going through the effort of downloading the app, then uninstalling it, then leaving the crap rating.

So either there are some dedicated facebook haters out there, or the people who tried this app really hate it that much...

"How can you tell someone isn't on Facebook? Don't worry -- they'll tell you."

I read this a while back on a HN thread and it resonates more and more by the day -- there are a number of dedicated haters such that such things don't suprise me...it may need a bit rough on the edges but some take it a bit extreme

It's not like installing an app is so much more trouble than leaving a rating.

I rated the Facebook Android app 1 star because it came preinstalled as crapware on my cell phone and there was no way to remove it. I had never downloaded it.

You negatively rated the application because your carrier chose to abuse the system/ partition?

Seems like misdirected outrage...

They went and downloaded an app. Shared even more personal information with Facebook. Just to show how much they hate Facebook?

They really showed them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUHk2RSMCS8

A lot of people rate Facebook at 5-stars because they like Facebook. The reviews that say "I wish it still had widgets, apps, etc" clearly shouldn't have 4-5 stars, yet do.

The irony of forcing Facebook users to create a Google+ account so that they can give it a favorable review...

"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."

Android 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".

Actually, 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.

Yep.

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.

"The freedom of Android allows me to turn my ordinary smartphone into a free, personal data mining, advertising platform! Take that, Apple!"

This 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?

> 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.

You 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 :)

Wait, 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.

Yes, 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.

My 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).

sorry, we are talking about carrier locked phones and custom samsung images.

Nexus devices do not fit the bill.

Parent comment was explicitly referencing a Nexus device...

But he was replying to my comment regarding Samsung phones

I had no idea that "open" Android was so locked down for your average (ie, non-rooting) user. Combine with bootloader locks, and you have mandatory privacy invading apps.

And some people think Apple is Big Brother?

Not sure why gcb0 elided to point out that since 4.0 Android allows disabling built in apps. (Functionality equivalent to deleting, except their space in the ROM is still occupied).

Locked/unlocked bootloaders is a fairly different issue and is seeming to be much less of an issue lately.

mostly because i never used a carrier locked in device.

but i just took a quick look on my wife's noteII, and the only thing i could do was to 'hide' the app from the drawer.

there were no "disable" option.

I guess the OEM might be allowed to remove the option, but it should be under apps settings. It won't be in the drawer menu if that's where you're looking.

I am amazed that there is an app worse than Facebook for Android.

Only if it's another app that's made by Facebook, it seems.

They 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?

Unless I'm mistaken, they did. Chat Heads is part of the most recent Facebook Messanger update. You can get it without Home.

and that's why I uninstalled Messenger. I don't want messages (which is facebook's version of email) drawing on top of my other apps.

Turn that feature off then?

Chat 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.

Chat 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

Um. The only difference between webOS app switching and Android (ICS and beyond) recent apps is the size of the thumbnail...

They technically are two separate products. Chat Heads is a Facebook Messenger feature while Facebook Home is a separate app.

I currently have Chat Heads installed w/o any Facebook Home integration, as does everyone else I know using Chat Heads.

Great feature (terrible name).

These 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.

To be fair, the slow growth might partly be explained by their restricting it to a few devices in the US only.

Advertisement in my phone's background? Thanks, but no thanks

May 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.

For 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...

I'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.

"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.

I'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.

I 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.

I'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"

What an average developer would be happy with is not relevant in any way to a multi-billion dollar company with investors to answer to.

How 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

500K 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...)

I 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.

Flipboard 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.

Flipboard 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.

This is an awesome new feature discovery for me, but I don't think my phone will ever have a net gain in charge anymore.

The 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/

>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?

Errr, 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.

vapid 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.

Stop blaming the users for a bad product, especially when your suggestion goes against the core purpose of the product in question.

Oh yeah and there's email, phone, and all kinds of other communication platforms. They are all bad products because there's so much spam, right?

"e-mail" and "phone" are not products. That's like calling Facebook "internet".

Has 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?

I 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.

I think you've got confused between a rating and an in depth product review.

If I have the "wrong friends" for a product to be useful to me, then I would probably not rate it highly.

>So i'll say it again. You, the user, is ultimately responsible for what comes up in your stream.

I think this is a very outdated and anti-user way to approach the Facebook service, and I hope your idea of how these services work will be overthrown by better startups or a better Facebook.

I see it as simply:

* A failure of Facebook to figure out what I like seeing, which is shocking seeing as I literally "Like" the things I like seeing!

* A failure of Facebook to categorize input properly at the time of input.

If Facebook properly understood input, and properly understood what I like seeing, then "curation" wouldn't be an issue.

In light of those user experience failures on the part of Facebook, your opinion is "curate it yourself" but my opinion is "Facebook has failed when I curate it myself".

If I want to curate it myself, I won't use a walled garden feed system like Facebook...

I can only imagine the shitstorm that will happen when Facebook starts actively curating content for you...

They already do by default, but they are doing a pretty bad job. Unless you specifically set it to do so, you only get updates from the people Facebook considers you are interested in.

Right now, it's easy to either unfriend someone, or hide ALL of their stuff from your feed.

I'd prefer to be able to say things like, "Show me photos that X posts, but don't show me any of the web links that X posts".

I'd love to be able to say #politics when I post to Facebook so that my friends who aren't interested in politics can "hide" the politics category.

But, I'm just dreaming now.

>> Slamming the service because you don't like the postings of people you chose to subscribe to is just a little bit ridiculous.

It appears you are viewing Facebook as some kind of alternative to Google+, or as a news feed where you can 'subscribe to interesting people' or something like that. That's one way of using Facebook, but I'd estimate the vast majority of people use it more like a network of friends, relatives, close or distant acquaintances, famous people/companies/products you they like, etc. The idea behind Facebook Home is to put information originating from this network in your face, all the time. Just saying you should simply block updates from anyone who isn't interesting enough to randomly show up on your home screen, kind of defeats the purpose of the feature.

Why are you blaming the users and the friends, but not the service?

I friend people based on how well I know them and wanting to keep in touch, not how interesting their facebook posts are. Sure, I don't really care about all the mundane things my friends' kids do every day, but it's nice to know what people are up to in general. That doesn't mean the stream is irrelevant or useless to me, but it also doesn't mean I need to see it every time I turn on my phone.

You're not getting his argument. I can have friends and colleagues that I want to stay in touch with, but I don't necessarily want to read everything they post. Facebook doesn't give you very effective tools for filtering content as opposed to people. Mind you, this is general problem in social, I'm not trying to single out FB particularly.

Family.

my life is about finding interesting work to do, and sharing experiences with my friends and family - I don't have time to waste "curating" my life.

I like getting different levels of detail from different networks, particularly since I've never seen a good implementation of multiple views at different "noisiness" on the same network. So it would be a net negative for me to combine all my streams in a single view; facebook is at one priority level, email is another, rss is another.

There are no ads currently in Home. Are you sure you really paid attention?

Just 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.

> 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.

Simplest answer is Tumblr. It's crack to the digital kids these days.

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