Facebook announces the latest app "Home"

Facebook announces the latest app "Home"

Mark Zuckerberg during a Facebook press event introduced 'Home', a Facebook application which would work with Google's Android. One can download the free app on April 12 or pre-order HTC First. The all new Facebook app tries to bring in a new experience by upfront notifications and quick access to activity feed while using the smartphone. With its feature called 'Cover Feed', it enables users to check activity feed as soon as one unlocks the phone.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, He said it was an attempt to do away with app-centred systems that were a legacy of the computer world in which people clicked on an icon to start a program. Once installed on a phone, home takes over the lock screen and main display turning it into a live feed of information, notifications and images Facebook users are sharing.

Facebook also announced a special version of Home will come pre-installed on the new HTC First phone on AT&T. Home will launches on April 12th in the US, and will be available to users of Android Jelly Bean and Ice Cream Sandwich, but not Gingerbread. The international rollout will come later. The software will be available via Google's Play Store as a download and will work only with phones running Android 4.0 or higher – this accounts for about 50% of all Android phone.

There are  reactions after the announcement of the app, a pre-final year student from US, believes that such an app would be really annoying as it would make his "Android OS" phone seem like a "Virtual Facebook OS", thus destroying the utility of the phone in its entirety.

GigaOm who said it could be a route to gathering data about users that would otherwise be hard to find. "This application erodes any idea of privacy," he wrote . "If you install this, then it is very likely that Facebook is going to be able to track your every move, and every little action." These worries were echoed by Natasha Lomas at TechCrunch who said "The Facebookification of the mobile web is a threat to openness, to choice, to privacy - but only if you care about those things". Ms Lomas wrote that home would create many winners and losers and said it was a way for Facebook gradually to take over more and more functions on phones.