Home-Steading The Smartphone
Location, location, location.
It's as true on a smartphone as it is in the real estate game. With Facebook Home, the world's largest social network is tapping into prime real estate that — on Android, at least — is there for the taking. "Home" lives on this side of your phone's lockscreen, reducing the friction of doing Facebook to about zero. If that's what you want, this is your lucky day (actually, April 12 when Home becomes available in the Google Play store).
By developing the first of what Wired's Steven Levy has already coined as a "super app," Facebook argues that users should have the option of skinning an app on their phone as easily as they choose wallpaper. And they are the perfect service to try it: ComScore says 23% of the time the average smartphone user spends on the device is on Facebook (a fact CEO Mark Zuckerberg was delighted to point out at the Home press event.)
But any initiative to enhance a phone's role in your life comes at an interesting time, as I argue in my Reuters column this week. Just as Facebook wants to promote the Immersive lifestyle, a bit of backlash is creating a cadre of Selectives — those of us who are finding that phones can be counterproductive intrusions that need to be put in their proper perspective.
We're all Immersives at least some of the time — walking and texting, ignoring dinner companions to check e-mail, taking pictures of our food. But Selectives are the reason the Pebble smart watch caught fire and why people are fighting to be among the first to get a pair of Google Glasses. This new tech leverages the power of your smartphone but keeps it at bay so you aren't constantly reaching for it.
Who'll prevail? The good news is that we can co-exist. Other super apps are sure to follow, but offhand I can't think of one I'd like to put on such a pedestal.
How about you? Are you an Immersive or a Selective? And if you could have any app front-and-center, what would it be?
PHOTO: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive during a Facebook press event to introduce ‘Home’ a series of applications that integrates the Facebook platform into the Android operating system, in Menlo Park, California, April 4, 2013. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith
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11yGood or bad, Facebook is doing what other social sites have not done. It is constantly changing to remain a relevant site so it does not go the route so many other sites have gone.
Co-Owner at Infomatik Social Network Connections
11ywhatever advantage Android or Iphone may have, nothing of it compensate for now the Symbian'ss address-book (contacts), having two or three lines of addresses on the screen is just a joke ... so what? Nokia's Symbian as C6, N87 and E7 are still the best devices on the market.
Sr. Solutions Consultant ITAM (Certified ServiceNow Instructor, CSA, and CIS-HAM). My passion is to demonstrate how/why ServiceNow works and benefits all in making the world work better. #ITAM #HAM #SAM #EAM
11yThey may want to stick with getting Facebook working first.
Head of Information Systems at Unidade Local de Saúde de Coimbra
11yIts a big nothing...
Product Leader | Mentor | AWS | ex-SAP, eBay, Stanford, IBM, Microsoft, Sun | Comfortable with innovating and driving strategy in ambiguous problem spaces. Let's go make peoples lives better.
11yIts high time to shift operating systems towards "social by design." As mobile is the consumer technology du jour, its a natural fit that the platform for it would be designed around people.