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

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11–20 of 87 posts

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

#11
post #5

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?

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.

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

#13
post #5

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?

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

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

#14
post #4

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…

>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.

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

#15
post #5

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?

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).

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

#17
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.

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

#18
post #7
post #4

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…

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 wou…

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.

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

#19
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.
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