Last week saw the clarification of all the myths, hype and speculation of the Facebook phone... which turned out to be a software offering.. and a phone. The software offering is a application that can be installed on selected Android powered phones, the phone (the HTC First) will be shipped in a few days starting with AT&T.
Think of Oracle getting a leg in the application business. Think of they many failed attempts by Cisco. Or HP buying Palm WebOS. And so on.
Facebook's move from the social software category to the mobile phone category is such a move. It certainly helps to be the social software market leader, nonetheless it's not an easy step. Remember how Mark Zuckerberg even admitted less than 12 months ago, that Facebook got mobile wrong. Or remember the ill fated cross application effort Facebook tried with a pure HTML5 application, that faltered and turned out to be a move back to native apps?
And while Facebook stopped short of building their own mobile phone OS - a move which makes a lot of sense - if Home succeeds, it will become what really matters in regards of monetization on the smartphone - the application that gets the most eyeballs.
I also think it must irk to some point all the social vendors, that they basically need to reveal the content of the social interaction to the smartphone OS vendor, when latching into their proprietary notification system. It really comes back to the smartphone OS vendor to become more clever at exploiting the content of these messages for more directed, targeted marketing.
Moreover Facebook has been dabbling beyond the pure social feed model with the Instagram acquisition, with offering a messaging platform and even free phone calls for a number of countries. These additional apps - all driven by getting more information on the user's interaction and thus being able to pin point marketing messages better, require to tie in different applications and with that outgrow the capability and functionality of the typical app.
So Facebook creating an individual app launcher with Home and exposing the native Facebook communication services through Home, is the next logical step.
But Facebook also deserves kudos for keeping Home open to a certain point - as you can put 3rd party apps in the launch center. This of course is not only a noble pledge to openness, but another mechanism to track more about the user's behavior and usage for the purpose of more marketing data.
It will be interesting to see what Google's reaction to Home will be - as Facebook is basically taking advantage of the openness of the Android OS. But so have HTC and Samsung with their value add apps - but that was how the ecosystem was supposed to work...
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But at the core - let's not forget that Facebook needed to do a very good job from a UIX perspective to make Home a success. And the early reviews confirm that - in every review I have read - the usage of Facebook went up.
Simple UIX mechanisms like adopting the Instagram double tab for a like action are very powerful. Likewise the adoption of two dimensional swipes to navigate the Home app, a mechanism only promoted by Blackberry in their recent BB10 launch, gives credit to good UIX design as well the speed of adoption of working UIX features in the mobile apps market.
But Facebook was also innovative - with the chatheads mechanism, which give the user a representation of themselves across the applications as well as a application control metaphor. Kudos for this powerful new UIX mechanism.
On the flip-side - Home acknowledges that despite all the effort Facebook has put into getting much improved apps out in the last 12 months - the effort was still sub optimal in tying their offerings together before Home.
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| Facebook App Launcher from Facebook Home site |
A category crossover
If you think of the high tech landscape as different categories of products, cross overs between categories are notoriously seldom happening... because they are very, very hard to achieve.Think of Oracle getting a leg in the application business. Think of they many failed attempts by Cisco. Or HP buying Palm WebOS. And so on.
Facebook's move from the social software category to the mobile phone category is such a move. It certainly helps to be the social software market leader, nonetheless it's not an easy step. Remember how Mark Zuckerberg even admitted less than 12 months ago, that Facebook got mobile wrong. Or remember the ill fated cross application effort Facebook tried with a pure HTML5 application, that faltered and turned out to be a move back to native apps?
And while Facebook stopped short of building their own mobile phone OS - a move which makes a lot of sense - if Home succeeds, it will become what really matters in regards of monetization on the smartphone - the application that gets the most eyeballs.
Why not stop at the app level?
As mentioned, Facebook had a rough start into the smartphone apps business with their ill fated gamble on HTML5. Facebook even missed the influence of mobile in regards of their business model - selling advertisement. And while the monetization is still not yet fully fleshed out, it is clear that a normal smartphone app only gives limited control of a user's eyeballs. A user may see notifications posted from a social network, but still needs to go through a OS dependent lock screen, often an app launcher - so plenty of chances to get 'distracted' with other advertisement options.I also think it must irk to some point all the social vendors, that they basically need to reveal the content of the social interaction to the smartphone OS vendor, when latching into their proprietary notification system. It really comes back to the smartphone OS vendor to become more clever at exploiting the content of these messages for more directed, targeted marketing.
Moreover Facebook has been dabbling beyond the pure social feed model with the Instagram acquisition, with offering a messaging platform and even free phone calls for a number of countries. These additional apps - all driven by getting more information on the user's interaction and thus being able to pin point marketing messages better, require to tie in different applications and with that outgrow the capability and functionality of the typical app.
So Facebook creating an individual app launcher with Home and exposing the native Facebook communication services through Home, is the next logical step.
At the core... openness
Facebook Home was only possible due to the open standard nature of Google's Android smartphone OS. If Google would not expose lock screen, app launcher, dialer and message APIs, Facebook could not have pulled Home together. As Facebook managers and industry observers quickly noticed, good luck trying to do this on Apple's iOS. You can't as they all agree, as iOS is too closed, locked down.But Facebook also deserves kudos for keeping Home open to a certain point - as you can put 3rd party apps in the launch center. This of course is not only a noble pledge to openness, but another mechanism to track more about the user's behavior and usage for the purpose of more marketing data.
It will be interesting to see what Google's reaction to Home will be - as Facebook is basically taking advantage of the openness of the Android OS. But so have HTC and Samsung with their value add apps - but that was how the ecosystem was supposed to work...
The trend - UES - User Experience Softare
A few weeks ago I blogged about the rise of a new software category, user experience software. The example was the small Swedish startup Dexplora creating getsalesdone a more usable front end to salesforce's backend. Granted - Dexplora did not provide underlying applications as Facebook does - but at the end of the day for Facebook it's all about putting a better user experience for all of their services in the hand of the users. So the motivation is the same, the benefit for the user similar, only that the Facebook offering is vertically deeper.
But at the core - let's not forget that Facebook needed to do a very good job from a UIX perspective to make Home a success. And the early reviews confirm that - in every review I have read - the usage of Facebook went up.
Simple UIX mechanisms like adopting the Instagram double tab for a like action are very powerful. Likewise the adoption of two dimensional swipes to navigate the Home app, a mechanism only promoted by Blackberry in their recent BB10 launch, gives credit to good UIX design as well the speed of adoption of working UIX features in the mobile apps market.
But Facebook was also innovative - with the chatheads mechanism, which give the user a representation of themselves across the applications as well as a application control metaphor. Kudos for this powerful new UIX mechanism.
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| From Facebook Home website. |
On the flip-side - Home acknowledges that despite all the effort Facebook has put into getting much improved apps out in the last 12 months - the effort was still sub optimal in tying their offerings together before Home.
The enterprise impact
I see a few trends that will come up for enterprise vendors:- If Facebook Home succeeds - it will change the mobile advertisement game... while in app advertising will work the same process wise, the smartphone OS provider will no longer know, which apps have been run on a device. Facebook will be able to prominently display featured apps and ads instead. The fact, that Facebook denies any intention to do so (for the time being) - implicitly confirms that they are well aware of this potential.
- Despite all the BYOD frenzy, there is a market for closed down smartphones. Just look at your parcel service delivery rep, your limo driver, your flight attendant etc - they all carry smartphones (or tablets) that have been locked down to specific applications for their work related tasks... Facebook only phones may emerge and make it harder to find a presence on them going forward. Or to ease to BYOD pressure - the Facebook Home app may become the step to open the device a little bit - but not completely.
- It's an opportunity for all the marketing automation vendors to provide Facebook Home style applets to allow their clients to create Home based apps to promote their business.
- It's likely that Facebook may start an application market place on their own, to control the Facebook Home experience... that will create even more fragmentation to the smartphone app market place and make it harder for the contenders of the #3 stop (Nokia, Blackberry etc) to e compete for development budgets.
- The biggest criticism of Android has been the cluttered, non cross platform consistent user experience. So far Google has let this go - even played it to Android's advantage. Facebook Home may spur Google into a clean up mode and even offer a similar app like Home - maybe expand the Google Now offering. Similarly I am sure Yahoo!'s Marissa Mayer maybe itching to provide a similar offering to Home - with Yahoo! services and products... maybe she is up to that with Apple already as you read this.
- If Facebook can do it - why can't you do that... granted an enterprise vendor may not have the messaging and calling apps that Facebook has rolled out in the last 6 months - but with a bit of imagination I can well see salesforce doing a similar move with Chatter. Maybe even SAP gets carried away and dreams up a Sapphire announcement to propel their mobile business.
MyPOV
We are witnessing a very strategic category cross over move in the very dynamic smartphone marketplace. Monetization of smartphone apps has not been fully figured out - and Facebook's move with Home may have a long lasting ripple effect in how smartphone apps are built and monetized. Similarly it maybe a wake up call for Google et al and ambitious social enterprise vendors - salesforce anyone?