Facebook has unveiled its Android launcher replacement, called Facebook Home, the Android launcher that’s just perfect for those of us with perfect friends with perfect photos and a perfect life. Oh, and it’ll get ads, too. No thanks, Facebook.
Facebook has unveiled its Android launcher replacement, called Facebook Home, the Android launcher that’s just perfect for those of us with perfect friends with perfect photos and a perfect life. Oh, and it’ll get ads, too. No thanks, Facebook.
Hmm lets see: do I want to be spied by Google or by Google and Facebook? If you want my opinion, Facebook and other social networks should be blocked by every country in the world.
Edited 2013-04-04 21:47 UTC
Actually, I want to be spied on by them. I know that the only reason they’re spying on me is so that they and their ‘partners’ can advertise to me. But since I have blocked pretty much every avenue they have to spam me, it brings me great joy to know that they’re wasting resources tracking me
Especially since I have fake Facebook/Google accounts on my main browser, which makes for nice universal login solutions for sites that I don’t care much about. Like, if I want to comment on a story, I don’t have to sign up… I just hit the Facebook login button, and sign in with my fake account.
‘You just want stuff for free then …’ well, no not really. If Facebook had a ‘Premium’ account that had features that were actually useful, such as those offered by the Social Fixer browser extension, I might be persuaded to pay a couple bucks a month for that.
brilliant idea having fake gmail and FB accounts left logged in as universal logins….. why didn’t i think of that before, doh! thanks x
Curious, did you create a full blown fake persona or just email, name and a password? Would you use real billing or shipping details with a fake account somewhere?
Did you have any other challenges to overcome for this model to work for you?
Why the hell would anyone give Facebook any billing or shipping addresses at all?
Basically, I just set up a fake name and throwaway email address. I don’t use these accounts for anything I actually purchase. I do have real Google/Facebook accounts, but I use a separate browser for those, so there is no tracking of searches/web usage under my real name.
Thom, your take on this is… “perfect!”. Bravo
A launcher is a good way to hook into all the data they’ve been missing from mobile users. So from a business view it’s a good idea.
The only problem is they’d have to make it good, which is something facebook wasn’t able to do. (At least when I last had a facebook account.)
While I certainly don’t want a Facebook launcher, I really wouldn’t mind having more of my notifications on the stock lock screen like Facebook Home has (as opposed to lock screen widgets, which can be a little ‘iffy’).
On iOS, if you get a notification, you just turn on the device and it’s right there on the lock screen – no need to pull down the notification bar. IMO, this is much more convenient than the Android way. Obviously, there may be security concerns so it should of course be optional to turn on that functionality, but I hope Google does more in this area for Keylime Pie.
It annoys me how people comment without actually knowing how Android works. Notably Om Malik, who claims:
* First, to buy his company time to build a proper OS that will come to us in dribs and drabs and then will wash over us suddenly, like a riptide
Why? What will that buy Facebook that home won’t? Especially given that home runs on every Android phone? What the hell does facebook need to build that they haven’t done with home? Or do you just not understand what an OS is?
* The phone’s GPS can send constant information back to the Facebook servers
But they could do that just as well with the app. It’s not iOS, it’s Android, the apps can do what they like.
* Facebook can quickly deduce the location of your home
Google already does. Facebook could do that even before Home.
* Android allows Facebook to do whatever it wants on the platform, and that means accessing the hardware as well
You keep using those words… I think Om doesn’t “get” Android.
No way in Hell I would use this. They can’t even make a decent normal FB client in Android.