Mobile phones have long been on Facebook’s target list. With many users accessing Facebook through their phones and many others never accessing Facebook through their computers at all, the company has struggled in catching up to them.
Thus, accomplishing the mission of taking over your smartphone screens Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook recently unveiled a new way to access its services on android phones, called “Facebook Home”. Facebook Home basically provides your Facebook notifications; news feed posts and messages more integration with the overall phone experience. The new interface is expected to be available from April 12 via Google Play. A banner alert will be displayed on Google Play Store for you to download Home. Initially, the Samsung Galaxy Note II, the Samsung Galaxy S III, the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One, and the HTC One X are the phones, which will be able to access this service. However, in future, more and more phones will gain the Facebook Home access.
The numerous features that this new Facebook Home interface covers are:
Cover Feed
Cover feed is basically a stream from your News Feed, which focuses on what your friends are presently sharing; photos, status updates and links. With cover feed in place you can easily sit back and watch out stories you like the most. The main idea behind the concept of cover feed is to help you access updates from people that are more important to you.
Chat Heads
Chat Heads is one of the most exciting features that Facebook Home has brought out. With Chat Heads in place if a text message appears while you are reading an article on the web, you do not have to navigate to the messages app, rather you can easily reply to the message in a pop-up. Also, you can easily move chat icons on your mobile screen to get fast access to the ongoing conversations. This makes your overall mobile experience quicker and easier.
Notifications
While Facebook has decided to push notifications through Facebook Home as well, you will be able to access all your Facebook and other apps notifications on your home screen. However, you can also easily get rid of them or can easily flick them away from your view.
App Launcher
Another exciting feature of the amazing Facebook Home is the App Launcher. With App Launcher, you will have a bucket full of apps of different streams from which you can always customize your favorite apps into their own areas and pages.
All in all, by unveiling this entirely new Home interface; Facebook has very smartly and cleverly exploited the technology owned by one of its leading rivals, Google. It will be interesting to watch out the public response to this highly innovative initiative from Facebook to make user experience more refined.