There's been a bit of consternation over Facebook Home's "flop" after just over a month of availability.
Supposedly, AT&T is going to drop the HTC First from it's lineup after already dropping the phone from $99 to $0.99. It took an entire month for Facebook Home to reach 1 million downloads from Google's Play store!
Listening to the press and analysts, Facebook should pack it up, because Facebook Home is going nowhere. But this is just another case of the press and analysts making something of nothing. The verdict is still out on Facebook Home. Facebook will play the long game on this effort.
The HTC First was never going to fly off the shelves -- Facebook Home is a non-exclusive feature and the HTC First was just a proof of concept and a vehicle to introduce Facebook Home to the world. HTC had nothing to lose and needs to pull every lever it can to try to get back into the race against Samsung. However, even Facebook diehards aren't going to rush out to buy a phone because of Home, they'll still wait for their normal upgrade cycle. And for those who were buying phones in the last month, one phone among several dozen still isn't going to grab a lion's share because of this one feature.
For Facebook, the phone sales are not the metric, the downloads are. So, only 1 million downloads in 1 month. Of course they would have liked to see more. But how many people know that Facebook Home exists? Outside of the tech sphere and heavy Facebook users, I doubt many people know that Home is available. Sure, there were commercials, but they were terrible for Facebook because they were made by AT&T, which only mentioned the HTC First as the way to get Facebook Home. Again, Facebook's main metric should be downloads, but the commercials most people saw didn't tell them they could download it whether they were with AT&T or not and without buying a specific phone.
Facebook Home can't be dismissed just yet. What happens when more people realize it's just an app, a download away? Sure, many will find it overwhelming and overly intrusive and delte it, but the slow ramp of awareness will also give Facebook time to dial back in some ways while drilling deeper into taking over Android in other ways that users may be more willing to accept.
Home is a long game for Facebook. Check back in a year.