Are you a Facebook enthusiast? Do you find yourself going through social media withdrawal when you go unplugged during a crucial family trip? Or, do you find Facebook your second lifeline that helps you stay connected ever since you chose to be a full-time mommy?
To expedite and enrich your social networking experience, Facebook has recently introduced Facebook Home, a family of apps that overhauls your mobile experience, turning your Android device into a Facebook phone that puts you and your friends at the heart of it. It incredibly bumps off everything from your home screen to turning your device into an all-new Facebook mobile portal.
So, what does Facebook Home actually offers? It essentially consists of three distinct elements – the Facebook Home Cover Feed, the Chat Heads, and the App Launcher, each one adding a different functionality to your Android device. Let’s delve deep into each one of them to know how these features enrich our social media experience.
Facebook Home Cover Feed
The Cover Feed sweep over your homescreen and the lock screen and introduces you to Facebook’s news Feed and app launcher. The cover feed takes all the updates on what your friends are doing and slaps them directly on your homescreen. So, you get to know all the latest updates without you having to launch an app or even unlock your phone.
As soon as you turn on your phone, you will see Facebook Home’s Cover Feed, which is essentially your Facebook News Feed optimized for an Android smartphone. All your photos, status updates, videos, and links will appear as soon as you hit the home button, thus filling your HD screen with color-rich graphics.
The Chat Heads
The second element is a big update to your Facebook messenger that promises to change the way you interact with people. Known as ‘Chat Heads,’ it is a feature that works both with your SMS as well as Facebook messages and allows you to immediately track your ongoing conversation without the need of switching between different apps. The Chat Heads poses to be your one-stop destination to keep a track of all your non-voice conversations, which includes texts and Facebook messages. The biggest advantage of Chat Heads is that it always runs in the background, to help you jump in and out of chats while you are busy doing other stuff, like watching a video or surfing the web.
The app launcher
Another interesting element of Facebook Home is the radically simplified App Launcher that allows you to do much more with your phone rather than just using it to stare at status updates all day. Through App Launcher, you can easily reach to all the other apps that reside in your phone. You can simply add app essentials, organize your apps, or do all the other things that you want to do when you’re not logged onto Facebook.
Amazingly simple and fun to use
Facebook Home is based on a gesture based setup that allows you to conveniently switch between your apps and Facebook notifications. There are badges and notifications on every app that keeps you updated with all the latest happenings. Notifications – sorted by friends, rather than apps – is something new and never heard of. The cover screen is also a welcoming addition that collapses both widget-based home screen and app drawer into the same interface.
Facebook Home keeps you in tune with all the latest updates and news feeds so that you don’t miss the fun. However, initially this welcoming new addition is available only for a handful of devices, including the HTC One, HTC One X, HTC First, Samsung Galaxy S III, Galaxy S4, and Galaxy Note II. The remaining Android devices have not been covered under the roll-out umbrella and have been left out in cold.
Install now to get started
Getting started is a familiar process for anyone who has installed a custom launcher. You can directly download and install Facebook Home from Google Play Store. When you run the app, you’d see a dialog box asking you if you want to set Facebook Home as your default launcher whenever you hit the home button. If you decide not to use it, then there will be settings within Home that will let you turn it off. Thus, installing and using Facebook Home is a fairly simple process that can be easily tapped without much of hassle.
Well, with Home, Facebook has moved beyond the simplicity and primitiveness of how we used our social media handles and offers us better tools and techniques to modernize our user experience. With this innovative move, Facebook has definitely put “people ahead of apps” and had offered a tool for all die-hard Facebook junkies to follow.
So what’s you take on Facebook Home? Don’t forget to let us know.
