Illustration of Facebook mobile interface (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Facebook Home For Android

With one in three people across the globe connected to Facebook, it represents a huge market that every company is trying to hone in on in order to capitalize upon the popularity.  The Android smartphone OS is one of the most recent comers to this market, launching a Facebook Home app for Google smartphones that has been met with no small amount of criticism. 

The Facebook Home app is a reinvention of the standard layout of the website.  It completely fills up your phone screen, meaning that it is not possible to run concurrent apps at the same time unless you are constantly switching back and forth.  While there are ways to dial back the app on your operating system, it comes pre-loaded, meaning that users will either need to modify it or ignore it completely if it starts aggravating them. 

This is not to say that Facebook home is a bad thing for all mobile users.  Many Facebook users are more prone to being connected to their friends and contacts and are willing to accept a full-screen interface in order to look at pictures and chat with friends.  All users, however, have to re-learn how to use the app in order to scroll through pictures, chat, enter text, and browse around. 

As first-generation software, the public is sure to see many changes to Facebook home in the near future.  Since only the very newest Android OS phones can run the app, any customer with an older phone need not worry about it until they upgrade -- if they ever upgrade at all.  Since it replaces the home screen with images and text, it may be comforting for some and limiting for others.  Since it is pushing forward the layout of the site, however, it offers a change to the ordinary for Android users.