HTC First - The Facebook Phone

[RePLAY]

 

HTC released the official "Facebook Phone". The UI is called "Facebook Home" using Android OS. Not sure how i feel about this one yet. The hardware isnt mind blowing, that's for sure...

 

http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/htc-first/4505-6452_7-35575658.html

[HaloCory22]

Hey, its the iPhone 3G.

[eaterfan]

It's not designed to be a high end phone. The retail price is supposed to be $100. 

[RallyMo]

Despite the announcement of the HTC First, that's not the real story here.

 

The real story is "Facebook Home":

 

 

Facebook has a very interesting approach here. They're essentially introducing a launcher that will effectively take over a person's phone to a degree and make their phone "Facebook Phone" via installation. It's actually quite brilliant and not something that many would have predicted until very recently. My guess is that they won't be able to do something like this via iOS.

 

https://www.facebook.com/home

[St1ck]

You would have to be really into Facebook in order want this crap on your phone. 

[gotbeer]

It'll be interesting to see how Facebook Home takes off.  And if Yahoo and Twitter and other companies follow suite.

 

More than anything.  I think this is an evolution of an app.  

[mrwicked]

lame.

FB realizes no one wants to use the half dozen cheezy apps they have been throwing at people (main app, camera, messaging, etc).

so they just make a skin to push them front and center.

 

will be interesting to see if it catches on.

 

they are basically just throwing darts at the wall at this point to see what sticks: putting everything on one page so advertisers can crawl easier (ie timeline), gifts (send your friends a sock of the month club subscription), promoted stories, selling access your inbox for $1 to marketing companies, copying snapchat with poke, home, etc.

[Brandon]

Really looking forward to this.

 

I want to be able to tell people what I just ate and thoughts about gun control on the fly.

[mrwicked]

Right.

And they made it very clear that the FB home will show ads.

So now you get ads on your phone without even opening up the FB app. And those ads will be based on not just friends/likes but I'd assume always-on location tracking. 

 

It's just them trying to actually make money somehow.

Folks realize the consumer free-app space is essentially on life support. Users != revenue.

[RallyMo]

Doesn't it all come down to ad revenue for Facebook, really? They'd be crazy to not to try given the reality they're faced with.

 

Something like 20% of the time people spend on their mobile devices is on Facebook (mostly via the main app) and 60% of the time people post to Facebook is on mobile devices. If they can manage to allow people use their non-FB applications from within an environment that increases their exposure to FB and its ads, it's worth a shot, especially if they don't have to start making devices on their own, right?