The most recent big news coming from the giant that is Facebook is the release of Facebook Home. You have most likely seen the commercials by now but still might be wondering what exactly Facebook Home is bringing to the table. Facebook Home is not actually a new OS for your phone, it is simply a new home screen that adds a few new features. We have gone through all the new features and have listed what we love about the new interface and a few things we are not so crazy about. The most obvious change to your phone running Facebook Home is going to be the home and lock screen, called Cover Feed. Your lock screen will be a full screen shot of your cover photo with a smaller bubble of your profile picture, that is used to navigate through your phones options by swiping.
I will admit this is a sleek looking design, but I am not sure how I feel about looking at the same picture of myself every time I want to access my phone. This Cover Feed will also display all your notifications from Facebook, email, missed calls, etc. The full notification functionality will only work on the HTC First, which is the first phone being released to have Facebook Home stock. Everyone else who decides to download the Facebook Home software onto a different phone will only get their Facebook notifications on the Cover Feed. While the functionality of this notifications system looks great, the fact that everyone without a HTC First will only get their Facebook notifications may create some unhappy iPhone users. I also have a feeling people are going to have to put some serious filters on their notifications or they will be inundated by notifications every time they access their phone.
Perhaps my favorite feature is what they are calling Chat Heads. This allows for messages from your friends to pop-up on your screen over other apps. This means if you are in the middle of an article online, or you are about to break your high score in Angry Birds, you do not have to exit out of that app and navigate to your message app. It will simply pop up onto your screen with a small "Head" of the person sending the message and the message itself. These Heads can also be moved anywhere on your screen so they do not interfere with more important business.
It will be interesting to see how consumers take Facebook Home. Sure people love Facebook, but is this just too much? Personally, I am not sure 90% of the notifications I get from my Facebook are important enough to have staring at me every time I check my phone. I do, however, really hope the Chat Head idea takes off and we get more versions of this floating message service available.
-Mike