Facebook has planned to bring out an own smartphone which puts
facebook in the center of the smartphone apps and OS. However it seems as
if these plans were too expensive or too ambiguous and thus Facebook has
now officially stated to bring out a special App: Facebook Home.

The platform however is still the same and is Android. This way, Facebook wants to reach ALL Android smartphone users and not only those who use a special facebook smartphone if it would have been released.

The idea of bringing out an App and not a whole smartphone makes things much more convenient and cheaper. The fact that the smartphone market seems to be oversaturated also would not leave much room for success of a dedicated smartphone running mainly facebook.

The Coverfeed homescreen will pass all updates directly to the lockscreen/homescreen with the opportunity to doubletap items one likes. The later stage also plans to zap advertisements to the Coverfeed. However I think this would make the App vanish from many user smartphones again. No one wants to be “welcomed” from Adverts when switching on his device (me neither!)

The App is deep-digging into the system and thus handled with care. It is not known yet if the App can be easily removed again. Things which are yet missing: The Facebook home does not show the phone status bar, some apps are only listed when you start up the facebook app and some functions are hidden behind some other icons the user has to touch first.

As good as the facebook home app sounds, the scarier it is that it is deep-digging into the phone’s OS and the fact that Facebook also plans to broadcast adverts over this new App make me considering this App rather not handy and cool!