Social network giant Facebook, which had launched the Android app Facebook Home on 12 April, has received an average response from users with only a little over 500,000 downloads made since the app's debut on the Google Play store.
Despite hosting a fancy event and marketing blitzkriegs by Facebook to promote its flagship app launcher, Facebook Home has failed to elicit interest from the large section of app enthusiasts. As per a recent report, Google Play has recorded a little over 500,000 downloads with a less than below average rating of only 2.2 stars given by the app users.
Most of the app users found the new Facebook Home dull due its limited features, and have suggested Facebook to tweak the app to include widget support and additional customization options to make it more user-friendly. On the other hand, hard-core Facebook fans have given a big thumbs-up to the new Facebook Homes software for its innovative feature like Chat Heads which helps the user to text messages and post reply on the Facebook Wall, simultaneously, whilst doing other activities on the smartphone.
Facebook Home works more as a user-interface than a normal app. On installation, Facebook Home converts the Android home-screen into a Facebook centric cover page on the smartphone.
Top features of Facebook Home:
Cover Feed: This feature makes Facebook an official lock screen and home screen on the android smartphone integrating all the apps in to a hub. Whenever a new notification comes up on any apps, the cover feed will pop the notification on the home screen there by reducing the time and effort for looking updates in each app.
Chat Heads: This feature helps the user to send and receive texts even if other apps are active. For example: If the user has opened an app to listen to music, or browse the internet, he/she will still be able to send and receive texts as well as Facebook messages from the same spot. The user can jump in and out of conversations while doing other things, like watching videos or browsing the web. Users can reply straight away from chat heads or hide them if they're not ready to respond.
Notifications: This feature pops notifications on the smartphone screen to view messages which are directly meant for users. Suppose a friend writes on one's Facebook Timeline, a notification pops on the home screen and users can just tap it to view the message along with the person's profile pictures. A double tap on the same message lets the user post a reply to that message.
Apps: Users can put all their favourite apps into one place just by dragging apps onto the home screen's app launcher for easy accessibility.
