Facebook – The right move

Home is the right strategy for Facebook to extend its reach.

• Facebook Home is a software skin that takes over the home screen of an Android device putting Facebook functionality front and centre of everything that the user does. 
• The experience is very communication centric with updates and messages popping up from friends in a novel and graphically interesting way.
• It will come preinstalled on the HTC First and be available to download from Google Play for selected Android devices.
• The fact that not all Android devices will be able to run Facebook Home is yet another sign of both the horizontal and vertical fragmentation that is inherent to Android.
• More important to the launch was the demonstration of Facebook Home running on the Samsung Galaxy S3.
• To me this means that Facebook has developed different versions of Facebook Home to run on HTC and Samsung but how many other devices will it run on?
• Whether it will run on the Galaxy S4 remains a mystery.
• Facebook Home effectively makes Facebook the default communication method rather than Gmail, Skype, ChatOn, WhatsApp and so on.
• This is crucial as it makes Facebook the easiest and most intuitive way of communicating with other users which strongly encourages the use of Facebook services beyond just social networking.
• To me, this is the key to Facebook becoming a giant of the Internet rather than just a niche player (albeit a big niche).
• The timing is right.
• US smartphone users currently spend 24% of all their smartphone time engaged in Social Networking.
• 75% of that time is spent just in the Facebook application (18% of total time) making Facebook far and away the most used application on a smartphone.
• Given these statistics, I can see how users might be keen to install Facebook Home on their devices.
• Facebook Home is obviously aimed at broadening and extending that reach and I think it has a good chance of success.
• Winning broader usage is key to Facebook as the more time users spend with its services, the more it learns and the more it can earn from advertising.
• Key metrics to look out for are:
  • How well the HTC First will sell?
  • How many times will Facebook Home be downloaded from the Google Play?
  • In 12 months time what will Facebook’s mobile usage statistics look like compared to now?
• Only time will tell but Facebook has finally made the right move to extend its reach beyond social networking.