I tried out home on my Nexus 4 and the biggest issue I had was that I felt weird having pictures of other people's kids scrolling by as the background on my phone.
I think the marketing and reality just didn't seem to mesh (although it usually never does). On the commercials and ads for Facebook Home everything was a professional picture that looked great. Meanwhile, in reality, you get today's toddler picture #4 from your co-worker and the plate of food your friend's dad just got from the Szechuan place in Kahului.
It's easy to see Home as a failure because Facebook is so huge, but it's an early product. They can't develop all the capabilities to ship a mobile phone without getting their hands dirty, and Windows and Blackberry are proving that a good mobile OS doesn't mean you have distribution. They have "Facebook phones" in stores and they didn't have to: - invest in hardware - develop a new OS - fork Android - bootstrap reta…
> This approach is eerily like Tesla, where even if your initial product doesn't match your end goal, you have a realistic path from reality to vision.
Except people liked Tesla cars from day 1. People don't seem to like Facebook Home, even when it is free. It's not that they don't like Facbeook (the regular app and the Messenger app are both very popular), it's that they specifically don't like Facebook Home.
Update: Look at the reviews / install count and most importantly install trend. Brutal.
This article is light on content and heavy on sensationalism, but it's also not wrong. How many of the people in this thread jumping on the author are actually running Facebook Home? Exactly.
Here's another question: How many people in the world, who are current or potential Facebook users, might like to have Facebook as their first and main interface to the world?
Facebook asked that question by making such an interface available. Guess what? In the world of rational beings (which might not include knee-jerk business reporters), it might take a while to answer that question.
Here's another question: Of the current or potential Facebook users who want Facebook as their main interface to the online world, how many will spend more time and money on Facebook as a result of having that interface? Gee, I don't know. Let's let Home out into the world, and find out. Snarky folk can declare it a disaster or failure after a month--I'm sure Facebook is happy to have it out there as one of several options, and learn from actual experience. Radical concept, no?
This article is light on content and heavy on sensationalism, but it's also not wrong. How many of the people in this thread jumping on the author are actually running Facebook Home? Exactly.
How many people on Hacker News criticizing the U.S. drone war on terrorists are actually terrorists?
That analogy is so bad it's like a really bad thing.