Facebook didnât realize just how important widgets, docks, and app folders were to Android users, and that leaving them out of Home was a huge mistake. Thatâs because some of the Facebookers who built and tested Home normally carry iPhones, Iâve confirmed. Lack of âdroidfoodingâ has left Facebook scrambling to add these features, whose absence have led Home to just 1 million [1] downloads since launching a month ago.
As I wrote in November, Facebook has been desperately trying to get more employees âdroidfoodingâ â" carrying and testing Android devices. You can see the posters encouraging employees to pick up a droid below. The issue was that Facebook handed out iPhones to employees for years. Facebookers could request an Android handset, but otherwise would basically get an Apple phone by default. That wasnât as dangerous years ago when the iPhone still had more marketshare and Facebook users, but since then Android has rocketed into the lead . If Facebook wants to reach the largest audience, it needs employees living and breathing Googleâs mobile operating system.
The lack of droidfooders didnât have serious consequences until Home, Facebookâs new âapperating systemâ . It replaces the lock screen, homescreen, and app launcher of compatible Android phones with a Facebook-centric experience. It offers Cover Feed, a big, beautiful way to browser the news feed the second you bring your phone out of sleep. Itâs missing the ability to build real-time information widgets, put your most used apps in a persistently visible dock, or organize your collection of apps into folders.
When I first tried out Home, I admit I was wooed by Cover Feed and Chat Heads , while those absent Android personalizations didnât phase me. Why? Because Iâm an iPhone user.
First off, the iPhone doesnât offer widgets at all, so I didnât really know what I was missing. Second, I was running Home on a brand new loaner âFacebook Phoneâ, the HTC First. I didnât expect to be able to port my iOS dock and folders to Android. I accepted that my experience would be somewhat unpersonalized. I was naive.
The real problem? Facebookâs developers were just as naive. Employees Iâve talked to admit that iPhone users testing Home made Facebook fail to see how wrong it was to overwrite peopleâs widgets, docks, and folders. Unlike working on some standard app, sticking a new Android device in an employeeâs hand to test Home wasnât sufficient. It needed long-time, diehard Android users â" something Facebook doesnât have as many of internally as it would like.
On Thursday at Facebook headquarters, VP of Engineering Cory Ondrejka and Director of Product Adam Mosseri admitted this is a critical flaw in Home â" one thatâs dissuading people from downloading or actively using Home, and thatâs inspiring the 1- and 2-star reviews dragging down Homeâs rating the Google Play [2] store. Those reviews, and peopleâs unwillingness to trade their personalized Android launcher for Home has caused Facebookâs apperating system to slip far down the charts. Itâs dropped out of the top 100 apps according to several analytics providers, as Sarah Perez detailed yesterday .
âThere a lot of feedback that not having a Dock on Home is an issueâ said Ondrejka. So instead of spending its first few monthly updates enriching Home with a better status composer or starting to monetize it with ads, Facebookâs team is backtracking. Instead of pitching Home as something that  âreplaces the lock screen and home screenâ, Facebook is shaving it down into a thinner layer on top of your existing phone.
To do that , first Facebook will offer a more in-depth new user onboarding experience that illustrates exactly how to access your other apps. Next, it will introduce âDockâ, pictured on the right. Itâs a way for users to import their old navigation bar of their four most frequently used apps. Mosseri tells me Facebook doesnât want users to have to sacrifice the work they did customizing their Android in order to use Home. Eventually, expect Facebook to add an app foldering system or folder importer to Home, as well as a way to display widgets.
âWe wanted to ease the transition from your old launcher to your new launcher,â said Moserri of the planned changes. Facebook would have known to make that s priority before Home launched, but its iPhone culture meant there was no one to cry foul. Team members didnât have old launchers to transition from.
Home has big potential. People who do get by its shortcomings and settle into Home see a 25% increase in the time they spend on Facebook. But itâs stuck at under 1 million downloads and likely many fewer active users because its overly aggressive invasion of Android scares people away.
Never has it been more apparent. If Facebook canât get Androids in more pockets at 1 Hacker Way, it will continue to misstep in mobile.
February 1, 2004
NASDAQ:FB
Facebook is the worldâs largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...
Links
- ^ 1 million (play.google.com)
- ^ Homeâs rating the Google Play (play.google.com)
- ^ â' Learn more (www.crunchbase.com)
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