“We want to bring this experience of having a home, and always knowing what’s going on around you, right to your phone,” founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at Facebook’s April 4th event in San Francisco.
“It’s a family of apps – you can install it and it becomes the home of your phone. We’re calling it ‘HOME.’”
As expected there will be no “Facebook Phone” or even a Facebook OS, Facebook will just release Home which will replace the default Android lock screen and home screen with updates from your Facebook news feed.
Facebook’s Home software will hide apps and instead pipe all the content and chat carried on via the social network to the home screen.
The software “wrapper” will also change the way that people swap messages or content by letting them respond by tapping on pop-up images, known as Chat Heads, rather than opening up apps and navigating through menus. Zuckerberg referred to this as a “new form of messaging.”
“Chatheads” show up even when you’re in other apps, like the New York Times app here. You can flick them to go away.
Starting April 12, the Facebook Home software will be available via Google’s Play Store as a download. Though it won’t work on all Android phones, Facebook Home will initially work on the HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S3 and Samsung Galaxy Note 2. It will also work on the forthcoming HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4, “and on more devices in the coming months,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
What can you say about the “Facebook Home” for Android?
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