Facebook Home

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.

HTML5: You should do more than hope

Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook spoke to the BBC... "Facebook's future - ads and Android"

We made a pretty big bet on HTML5, hoping we could build our applications once and it would work on all the different operating systems

I wouldn't read too much into her choice of words here if it wasn't a common refrain and a completely misguided one. Facebook was hoping they could use HTML5 to achieve their goals across platforms.

Devout HTML5 advocates often argue that current development should be done using HTML5 based on capabilities that it might have in the next several years. Facebook must have overestimated the capabilities of its engineers, which are undoubtedly top tier talent. Somehow they must have thought they could overcome the limitations of the platform at the time.

I find this confounding - one of the primary reasons for using HTML5 is the "write once, run anywhere" mantra, but Facebook is not hurting for engineering talent, the ability to attract talent, or the money to engineer solutions using the best possible solution for any number of platforms. Why choose to limit themselves from the outset on mobile? (Yes, I already answered my question -- engineering hubris).

Facebook "Home" on Android Only

Nigam Arora for Forbes:

Of course in the long run it makes plenty of sense for Facebook to offer Home for iOS. But the mere fact that Home is not available for iOS right now adds to the perception that Apple is no longer in the forefront of what people want.

Putting aside the debate over whether Facebook has any authority to define what people want, Mr. Arora doesn't understand app development or the capabilities an app has on the various platforms. No doubt Facebook would have loved having "Home" on iOS, probably preferring to have it on iOS first given the statistics showing iOS users have a higher propensity to spend money vs. Android users. But they couldn't release this on iOS because an app can't take over the system to the extent that Home does. Apple won't give another company the opportunity to effectively rebrand a phone for their own use. Neither will Microsoft. I would be surprised if Blackberry gave Facebook this control.

Facebook did this on Android because it's the only platform that they could do it on without permission of the platform developer (Google). Google is likely furious about this. Samsung is likely just as unhappy at the prospect of all their hard work building the Galaxy brand being subverted by an app that pushes that aside -- after all, this is just version 1.0. Over time, expect Facebook to continue taking over more and more functionality of an Android phone.

Google is facing a future where the platform they popularized for the purpose of pushing their own services is taken over by their competitors. What then? They'll have to go back to competing as a third party on other vendors platforms. They've alienated and grown a competitor in Apple. They've pushed Samsung in the direction of becoming a competitor.

It's possible that Android will end up being the worst thing to ever happen to Google.