The Annoying Facebook Home

When Facebook Home was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the “next version of Facebook,” I was keen to get it on my Android version. After all it could solve everything social. The day it was put on the Play Store on April 12th, I tried to install on my Note II. But I got a message the product was not available in my country. HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II are the only devices where you can use this. I waited till it got released i
nternationally and got it to my phone.

But this was not what I expected. My facebook friends are both close and distant friends, class mates, colleagues and a few other social animals. In activation, I saw photos of people whom I know only remotely, making appearance on my screen more often that I would have wanted. The shifting from Facebook Home to the Application bar was not smooth and I had to adjust the application bars to suit Facebook Home. The text messages were annoying. I thought I would give it a try for a fortnight.

Nothing went well the way I imagined Zuckerberg would have made this. There was Google Now similar to this which again I didnt like. Both failed in my devices because I am staying in India where nothing is organised. The time to work, home, temperature etc are all horribly wrong because Indians are not used to what Zuckerberg had imagined. Even on a sunday, Google Now alerted me to go to office and said my office is just 6 minutes away from my office. The temperature it showed was far different from what it was outside.   On Facebook Home, photos and status updates of innumerable friends whom I normally dont ever bother to see were popping up with cut and paste messages from great authors. There was no way I could customise both FB and FB Home differently. I thought of getting the feedback of those market where this would have got targetted.

But to my surprise I found the Google Play rankings dropped considerably. out of the 1 billion active FB users, only 1 million downloaded FB Home. This I consider is an utter failure. I am fully aware Home is not available in all handsets but then also consider thousands who may be annoyed like me.

Yesterday, I deleted it from my Note II. Post deletion, I feel I have been liberated. I still have Google Now on both my iPad and Note II as well as Xperia Ion. It may not be too far before I get rid of that too.