Editor’s Note: This is the last installment of a 3-part series covering Len Kendall’s abstinence from the “Like” button for a month.

If you haven’t been following along, in April I decided to commit myself to a simple behavioral experiment. I pledged to not “like” anything on or off of Facebook for a month, no matter how tempted I was (and believe me, I was tempted often).

My hypothesis was that at the end of this 30 day cycle I would be free of likes and that my detox period would be over. That isn’t the case. I still actively have to stop myself often from hitting that button, and it troubles me quite a bit. It was so simple and I did it for so long that it has burned into my internet muscle memory far more severely than I had anticipated.

I’ve learned several things along the way, but when I started this trial I wanted to answer one primary question:

Who exactly is benefitting the most from me hitting the like button?

While this experiment didn’t provide me with a direct answer to this question, it did force me to think long and hard about the probable ones. I’ve concluded that the following parties benefit from those billions (yes billions) of likes each day:

• Me: I’m not going to claim I get no value. Facebook has an algorithm that shows me people and information that I’m more interested in based on my like behavior. It’s not always spot on, and it irritates the shit out of me when I see this kind of stuff, but nonetheless it has a smart engine that shares timely content from people I care about.
• Brands: Likes feed brands who are trying to understand how they can refine their content distribution (copy, timing, targeting). They also increase the visibility of branded content through all sorts of Edgerank-y goodness. The fact of the matter is, I don’t care about making my favorite brands better marketers. I care about my favorite brands continuing to make products that I like. In other words, these likes don’t help me.
• Facebook (Part 1): Facebook makes the majority of its revenue from selling data. Yes, that manifests as selling ads, but in reality the company is selling the data that drives who sees ads and who buys them. Every single time I hit “like”, even if it’s on a friend’s baby picture, Facebook is growing its data stockpile that is being refined for their advertising customers. Sure, you could claim I’ll see more relevant ads if I help Facebook understand my tastes, but ultimately these likes don’t help me.
• Facebook (Part 2): When I give my friends likes, a little Pavlovian red flag goes off in their browser windows and it pulls them back into Facebook. There they spend more time, see more ads, and see more ads, and see more ads. While directly my likes may help my friends’ important posts rise to the top, it also trains them to crave likes and potentially augment their sharing behavior to earn them more likes. Again, these likes don’t help me.

Above are just four benefits yielded from “like” behavior. The obvious problem is that only 25% of the these items are benefitting me. And that’s being generous since I didn’t list off countless other beneficiaries. Call me selfish, but the ROI of the like button isn’t high enough for me to continue using it. Therefore, I plan to continue abstaining from it.

Although I started this experiment around a single element of Facebook, it’s led me to question the value of the many services the social network provides. Facebook has in many ways become the “big box” store of the internet. And while I do shop at such places in real life for certain commodity items, I don’t really want to go there for all my many specialty needs. I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I personally don’t want a big-box internet experience. For me, the web is about discovery, being bombarded with choice, and finding niche experts.

Refraining from likes has been a trivial experiment. I know that there are far more important behavioral issues online worth exploring (cyber bullying, crowdfunding, and citizen journalism just to name a few), but I hope that this small example of personal reflection on digital habits encourages you to do the same. Think about how you’re spending time on the internet, who its benefitting, and what’s worth testing in your own digital world.

And don’t like this post. I really mean it this time.

Lead image via Flickr user Djenan, CC 2.0

I’ve seen the future of Facebook, and it is… Yahoo!

Between 1994–2000, Yahoo! dominated the consumer Internet industry and much of the world’s attention. The company’s exclamation mark (sometimes called a “bang”) cast a long, purple-hued shadow across the globe, as users flocked to its ever-expanding array of services, and online and offline companies of all sizes threw money at it (almost literally) to gain prominent visibility among its massive, segmentable audience. Yahoo!’s page views rocketed; revenue rocketed; profits rocketed; stock price rocketed; market capitalization rocketed. Yahoo!, it seemed, could do no wrong.

Then, the world changed. Radically.

What Happened To Yahoo!

Consumer behavior shifted, with individuals the world over flirting with, and then devoting themselves to, myriad other online services. The business cycle changed and companies chose/were forced to reduce or eliminate their online advertising budgets. Then, when Internet advertising budgets returned a few years later, business behavior adjusted again, with marketers broadly diversifying their spend across the Web (following those same migrating users). And, perhaps most significantly and most representative of both of the previous issues, Google emerged, presenting consumers with a slate of invaluable (and competitive) services and companies with a nearly perfect mechanism/venue through which to market their offerings.

Needless-to-say, the 2000–2013 period has not been nearly so kind to the purple giant-of-yesterday — not to its metrics, its business, its stock or its market capitalization.

Throughout its rollercoaster-of-a-life, however, Yahoo! has remained shockingly static at its core, with a (still) massive, segmentable audience consuming an enormous volume of free content and services, surrounded by advertisements of all shapes and sizes. That those content/service offerings now include Fantasy Football and photos from Flickr, rather than, say, news and NASDAQ quotes, is nice, but irrelevant, as is the fact that the company now offers rich media and video ads, as opposed to just sponsorships and banners.

Those are incremental changes to the story — variations on the theme; because, the fact of the matter is that — apart from its early days of minimal competition and “easy money” — Yahoo! has struggled mightily to engage its users in fundamentally new ways; unlock the true value of its global user base for its advertising clients; and, bring to market any lasting innovation that even hints at shaking the status quo all over again.

In not so subtle ways, this reminds me of Facebook. A lot.

What Facebook Is Doing

Like Yahoo! in its early phase, Facebook hit the ball out of the park from the outset, and, it seems, hasn’t yet stopped running the bases. From the ivy covered confines of Harvard University, Zuckerberg & Co. now attracts more than one billion users to its site globally; has enabled hundreds of billions of friend connections; sees hundreds of millions of photos uploaded daily; and, generates several billion dollars of revenue annually. Not bad for its first nine years, right?

And yet, since its astounding opening act, Facebook has bestowed upon us:

• Gifting – blah.
• News Feed algorithm changes – yawn.
• Suggested Posts – meh.
• Messaging – join the club.
• Sponsored Stories – ummm.
• Graph Search – niche.
• Poking (again) – ha.
• Timeline – zzzzz.
• News Feed design changes – argh.

What’s next, a new color scheme? A new font?

What Could Happen To Facebook

Suffice it to say, the company is not exactly setting the world on fire with these efforts; more importantly, these are not (individually or collectively) doing much (if anything) to materially enhance Facebook’s relationship with its users; substantively increase the level of dependency felt by its advertising clients; and/or fundamentally alter the trajectory of its franchise or business. Said differently, where is Facebook’s second act, like Android (acquired, transformed and massively scaled by Google) or iPad? Where is its money-printing AdWords product? Where is its PayPal (acquired, and massively scaled by eBay)? Where its its quantum leap forward? Where is its disruptive force?

None of this is to suggest that Facebook has, in any way, “failed;” nor is it meant to take anything away from the extraordinary space that Facebook has carved out for itself in our collective universe. Similarly, I do not mean to imply that Facebook is necessarily destined to follow in the path of Yahoo! (after all, it would be damned near impossible to repeat all of those mistakes).

That said, it is, hopefully, a wake-up call, because — at least to this observer — the company and its business seem far too focused on tweaking the edges of its past creation(s) instead of changing the world all over again for both its users and advertisers. And that, as history might suggest, is a very risky path to enduring success on the Web.

Beware the “!,” Facebook. Beware the “!”!

According to a report from Bloomberg this morning, Facebook may be close to acquiring Waze, whose navigation app relies on alerts from users to deliver real-time traffic data. The deal is rumored to be 50% in cash and 50% Facebook stock. Waze, available for iPhone and Android, has been considered a likely acquisition target by Apple and possibly Google.

When asked about the acquisition, a Facebook spokesperson told me: “We don’t comment on rumor or speculation.”

The Israel-based Waze claims 30 million users and bills itself as the world’s “fastest-growing community-based traffic and navigation app.” Waze users allow the app to send their driving details to others in the area – for example, how long their commute is taking. Users can also provide additional details on their commute, report accidents and offer driver tips. 

Waze users can share their driving activity with Facebook friends from within the app. Waze has long utilized Facebook to help promote its service – though users do not require a Facebook account.

Waze is considered a direct competitor to Google Maps, whose service also offers real-time traffic data. If Apple does not acquire Waze, it could be due to Waze’s insistence, according to Bloomberg, that its ongoing development remain in Israel and that its brand be maintained.

This is less likely a concern for Facebook. When Facebook acquired the popular photo sharing app, Instagram, last year, it allowed the start-up to maintain its identity and has for the most part let it take charge of its development and user base. While many initially questioned that $1 billion purchase, Instagram has continued to grow – and remains popular with younger users.  That said, Facebook has moved development of two other Israeli companies it acquired to the U.S. 

Waze claims that by tapping its community of users, it can provide the best real-time traffic data, road conditions data and even provide users with alerts – based on social sharing – of the cheapest gas prices and quickest routes for a group to take to a particular destination.

Facebook, which has recently adopted a “mobile first” strategy, can certainly dramatically increase the Waze user base. Its recent earnings report revealed 189 million mobile-only users and 751 million “mobile monthly active users.” 

In addition to its users, Waze relies upon a community of designated “map editors” to improve its overall value, map detail and real-time routing service.  It is not known how this aspect of the service will be impacted by a Facebook acquisition. 

(See also OpenStreetMap: The Maps In Your Apps Are About To Get A Lot Better) 

According to Forbes, Waze and Facebook have signed a term sheet and a deal is expected for between $800 million – $1 billion. Apple is unlikely to counter because, according to Waze CEO Noam Bardin, it has built a mapping service that is too dependent upon its “GPS partners” and less inclined to tap the Waze community. While some Waze data has been used in Apple Maps, Apple primarily relies upon traditional mapping companies, such as TomTom, for its data. 

To date, Waze has received $67 million in VC funding. If purchased, it will likely be viewed as a major win for the budding SoLoMo (social-local-mobile) ecosystem. For more on Waze, here is a helpful video.

Facebook enabled a privacy feature Thursday called Trusted Contacts that allows you to select three to five confidants from your friend list to receive the virtual key to your account. If your Facebook is compromised by hackers or you forget your password, these people can supply the codes to get you back in. 

The feature was first announced as ‘Trusted Friends’ in October of 2011. “However, we were only testing for the first part of last year [2012], and the feature actually wasn’t available for much of 2012,” Frederic Wolens of Facebook Policy Communications told ReadWrite in an email. “The bulk of our work was making this more proactive (allowing you to select your friends ahead of time) than reactive (selecting your friends after you couldn’t get into your account),” he added. 

The Joy Of Facebook Hacking

While there may be some benefits to this feature, Facebook already has two-step authentication, making Trusted Contacts unnecessary in the likely event you can access your email and just use the normal password recovery option. More to the point, Trusted Contacts also pose a big risk. How much can you really trust those Trusted Contacts not to abuse their power?

Remember, it takes only three of the Trusted Contacts’ codes to get into your account. That’s good, right?

Right.

Unless the friends you choose have an affinity for the art of the Facebook hack. In my college years, when shared computers were often accessible in dorm rooms and campus hangout spots, Facebook hacking wasn’t just a prank, it was an art. The rules were simple: If anyone left their account open on any computer that wasn’t their own that person’s Facebook account was fair game. (Sometimes, even that simple rule was bent by the less honorable.)

What typically ensued was a chaotic, hilarious and often line-crossing exercise in testing the limits of friendship. The hack quickly transcended crude status updates and moved into true social media sabotage. Facebook hackers would change birthdays, send unwanted friend requests and write embarrassing notes on walls.  

For me, the whole ordeal culminated in a prank where I created a fake profile of my victim, replicated his post history for a week in secret, and then began friending everyone we knew. I mimicked his behavior so well no one figured out it was me for a good day or two. It remains one of my proudest Facebook hacks – and the epitome of my juvenile social media behavior. 

Breaking In

First off, let’s run through how a trio of your Trusted Contacts could access your account without you knowing about it. 

After opening Facebook in a different browser or private browsing mode, a Trusted Friend would  click “Forgot your password?” From there, they would identify the victim by name in the Find Your Account field, saying that they no longer have access to the email accounts listed. That lets you put in any email address – and the process moves on without requiring further authentication.

By entering in only one of the Trusted Contacts’ names — in the event that you’re the one doing the hacking, it can be your own name — you can access the code portion of the page. With three codes collected by visiting Facebook.com/recover and claiming the person has reached you by phone, you’re immediately brought to a new password screen where the Trusted Friend can reset the password and gain access to the account. 

Sounds like it would be a lot of work, and it certainly is when I tried it myself on my own account, but you are essentially handing over the ability for three people, or just one who convinces two others to give them the codes, to change your password without any new authentication required on your end. Granted, you can revoke access to a Trusted Contact, but only from your account.  

Who Can You Trust?

Obviously, the best precaution is to pick people you’re confident won’t prank you. But there are also a certain types of Facebook user who should never get this kind of access. 

For one, don’t trust anyone who infrequently uses Facebook or who likes to condemn the social network and those who indulge too much in it. The first sign of a weakness for Facebook hacking is disregard for the damage a “Liking” spree can do, or downplaying the importance of Facebook birthdays. These people find it hilarious when dozens of people begin mistakenly wishing you a Happy Birthday. 

Conversely, people who use Facebook too much may be just itching to pull off the perfect Facebook prank – and they’ll know the the best, most believable ways to impersonate you.

One smart approach might be to pick two people that dislike each other, making it unlikely that they’ll work together to mess with you. 

The simplest solution: Don’t use Trusted Contacts. The feature adds a layer of defense against strangers attacking your account, which could be reasonable considering this year’s surge incidents of malicious hacking. But it also seems like a sly attempt to push the boundaries of Facebook’s importance in our lives. 

But by ”trusting” your friends enough to give them a key to your digital life, you may be taking an even bigger risk of being pranked, if not actually hacked.

Mark Zuckerberg likes to say that Facebook is now a “mobile first, mobile best” company – and the company’s earnings report for the quarter ended March 31, 2013 actually backs him up, in both usage rates and revenue:

Mobile ad revenue for the quarter ending March 31, 2013 was $375 million, accounted for 30% of the company’s total ad revenues. That is up from 23% in the last quarter of 2012.

COO Sheryl Sandberg claimed that Facebook ads helped drive “25 million” app downloads. (Essentially, developers pay to promote their app inside a user’s Newsfeed. Click on the ad and go straight to Google Play or Apple’s App Store.) Zuckerberg added that, ”I think it’s clear now that we can create a lot of value for [developers] by providing identity. We’re starting to see real revenue from mobile app installs.” The company said 40% of top-grossing iOS and Android apps were promoted on Facebook.

Facebook boasted 751 million mobile “monthly active users” – a 54% increase over the same quarter last year and 71 million more than it registered in the fourth quarter of 2012.

In fact, the now company claims 189 million mobile-only monthly active users, up from just 83 million a year ago and 157 million in the last quarter of 2012

The first quarter also saw the debut of the Facebook Home launcher. So far, though, Facebook Home has fewer than a million downloads and only a 2 (out of 5) rating. Sales of the HTC First smartphone, which has Home embedded, have been rumored to be minimal. On the earnings call, Zuckerberg described both Home and the company’s new Graph Search as “long-term investments.” 

Facebook did not break out mobile usage by geography or platform (e.g. iPhone vs. Android), nor did it  separate user data by age or other demographics. Sanderberg, however, did say that the company’s mobile ad business was doing particularly well in Asia. 

Do Kids Still Like Facebook?

Overall, Facebook brought in $1.46 billion for the quarter, generally in line with Wall Street expectations – and a 38% increase year-over-year. Revenue from advertising hit $1.25 billion, a 43% increase year-over-year. Advertising accounted for 85% of Facebook’s total quarterly revenues, with payments and fees delivering the remainder.

Revenue aside, many of the rumors circulating around Facebook concerned worries that the world’s largest social network was beginning to lose members, particularly young users in the U.S. and other developed countries, and that existing users were becoming less engaged. On the conference call, CFO David Ebersman was asked if “kids still like Facebook.” He responded by stating that “Facebook is awesome for everyone, regardless of age. And, yes, kids still like Facebook.” Ebersman also claimed that, “Younger users are more active and engaged than other users… as for competitors, this is not a zero sum game.”

While Facebook did not fully address these questions, overall the Facebook user numbers looked relatively healthy:

• 665 million “daily active users” on average for March 2013 – a slight increase over Q4 2012′s 618 million, and a 26% increase year-over-year
• Monthly active users were 1.11 billion as of March 31, 2013 – a 23% increase year-over-year and up slightly from 1.056 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012.
• Instagram had 100 million monthly active users during the quarter

See also Facebook earnings summary and earnings slides (pdf).  

Yesterday, Facebook bought Parse, a San Francisco startup with a service designed to greatly simplify the process of creating mobile and Web apps. Today, Parse’s rivals are doubtless celebrating because the (reportedly) $85 million acquisition effectively puts a big seal of approval on their techniques for automating some aspects of app development.

(See also: What Happens When Almost Anybody Can Build A Mobile Business App?)

In tech jargon, outfits like Parse are often called “backend as a service” (or, worse, BaaS) companies. But they could be better described as mobile cloud-service companies. They offer services designed to easily tie mobile apps into the cloud, providing a host of automatic “backend” functions such as data storage and connections to social networks. That allows developers to focus on the core elements that make their apps sing instead of doing a lot of complicated integration with cloud systems.

One of the companies paying closest attention to Facebook’s move is Boston-based Kinvey, one of Parse’s biggest rivals and a startup eager to see this cloud-service market really hit the big time.

What This “Validation” Means

Over the space of a few months in 2011, three startups effectively created this app-service automation market. Parse, StackMob and Kinvey promised easy cloud integration to mobile developers, but lookalikes quickly surfaced. Cocoafish (acquired by Appcelerator, Tiggzi (now Appery.io), FeedHenry, Applicasa from the startup end, new services from the likes of Sencha (Sencha.io) andeven Apple (iCloud) joined the fray. IBM and SAP now also offer similar cloud solutions.

(See also: Parse Offers “Backend as a Service” to Mobile Developers)

Some critics wondered if the industry segment had become too crowded and if all the outside entrants would doom the three original backend-service providers. They were small, their business models were unproven and their stories (i.e., “we provide backends so you don’t have to”) were quickly in danger of being drowned out by competition claiming the same thing. There was a time in 2012, before it raised its first venture funding, when Kinvey had serious doubts if it would make it.

A map of the BaaS ecosystem from Kinvey from February 2012

Then these companies, which initially had started as developer tools, started turning into actual businesses. StackMob and Kinvey found that big companies were really interested in their services. Parse started attracting brands like the NFL’s Green Bay Packers, Hipmunk, Armani and the Food Network.

(See also: Bringing Enterprise Data To Your Mobile Workers)

It’s no coincidence that Facebook named Parse, StackMob and Kinvey (along with the likes of PhoneGap and Sencha) as preferred technology partners last week. These are companies with useful skill sets. All three have done extensive work with Facebook in the past. 

Many in the tech community associate “validation” of a new technological or business approach with startup venture funding or outright acquisition. But the likes of Parse arguably found validation much earlier, with the arrival of big, high-profile customers. 

“Lots of people are saying [the Parse acquisition] ‘validates’ the space,” said Sravish Sridhar, CEO and co-founder of Kinvey. “I disagree. The space was validated when brands like J&J, Aetna GSN and Cadillac began trusting their data and apps to BaaS.”

Sridhar has a point. But until Parse sold out, none of these startups had entered the “big money” realm of tens of millions in funding, revenue or acquisition. In that sense, the Facebook-Parse deal has definitely lifted the prospects of StackMob, Kinvey and the rest of their competitors.

Where Do These Startups Go From Here?

Parse reportedly had a long line of suitors. Facebook won the bidding, but Dropbox, Google and Yahoo also all apparently had interest, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Evelyn Rusli. A variety of other companies have also shown interest in the backend-service startups, including Salesforce (customer relationship management), Intel (chip manufacturing and developer tools) and classic enterprise service providers like IBM and SAP, which have acquired mobile enterprise application platforms (MEAPs) in the past. 

Dropbox had also bid for Parse– didn’t meet fb’s offer though.. google & yahoo also expressed interest —

— Evelyn Rusli (@EvelynRusli) April 25, 2013

When parsing what the Parse acquisition means to companies like Kinvey and StackMob last night, Kinvey’s head of marketing Joe Chernov turned to Sridhar and said, “Do you know of any other tech space that has so many different kinds of big companies wanting to acquire its vendors?”

It’s a good question and one that should have the likes of Kinvey and StackMob hi-fiving, jumping in their seats and making plans for happy hour. 

Twitter will be the next company to watch. It recently bought Boston-based Crashlytics and Bluefin for a total a little less than $200 million. Twitter is beefing up on its own application ecosystem (see: Vine and Twitter Cards) and could very easily find a place for backend services in its app efforts.

Facebook has just acquired Parse, a popular suite of tools for mobile and Web app developers. The acquisition will serve Facebook’s mobile mission well, encouraging developers to build apps tied into the social network while easing the barriers to entry.

Already, Parse has attracted interest from familiar names like Sesame Workshop, which makes a Cookie Monster app, and Carnival Cruises, which used Parse’s cross-platform tools to build its Ship Mate app.

The acquisition suggests that Facebook wants brands like these to go beyond building Facebook pages and running ads to creating mobile experiences which generate activity on Facebook users’ profiles and news feeds. 

With this buy, rumored to be worth around $85 million, Facebook dives headlong into the nascent game of providing the technical underpinnings for apps, also known as the back end. Parse’s peers in this emerging mini-industry are companies like Stackmob, Kinvey, and Cocoafish, the latter of which Appcelerator acquired last year.

Parse has an enthusiastic community of developers—and for good reason. The developer platform subtracts some of the nastier requirements of building apps, like server maintenance—ick! Instead, it lets app builders concentrate their energy around what matters – namely, developing an awesome user interface, or front end. 

We spoke with former Hipmunk mobile developer and user-experience guru Danilo Campos about what the acquisition means for developers loyal to Parse. 

“I hope the incentives are aligned such that Facebook wins when developers win,” Campos said. “It’s easy to get antsy when a [big company] buys up a gem. But I think Parse’s leadership is damn smart and if anything can navigate these waters for the best outcome, it’s them.”

Facebook refused to comment on the deal’s terms beyond saying that “this is an acquisition – not a talent deal.” Facebook has bought some design- and mobile-oriented companies primarily to hire their talent while abandoning their products. That’s not the case here: Parse and Facebook says current products will be supported.

According to Facebook’s blog:

Today, we’re making it even easier to build mobile apps with Facebook Platform by by announcing that we have entered into an agreement to acquire Parse, a cloud-based platform that provides scalable cross-platform services and tools for developers. By making Parse a part of Facebook Platform, we want to enable developers to rapidly build apps that span mobile platforms and devices.

It remains to be seen if Parse, under Facebook’s wing, will maintain or extend support for competing social platforms like Twitter. Still, Facebook didn’t seem keen on messing with the Parse’s existing well-loved products and services.

Facebook is planning to build a massive data center in Altoona, Iowa, the company said on Tuesday. That’s right, Altoona, Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines.

With more than a billion users around the world to support and just three wholly owned data centers (Forest City, North Carolina; Prineville, Oregon; Luleå, Sweden, with the latter two still being built out) Facebook may have needed another location. (The company has also stashed servers in at least two co-location facilities owned by other companies, on both the East and West Coasts.) But why Altoona, Iowa?   

Why Iowa?

According to The Des Moines Register, which deserves credit for breaking the story on Monday, Altoona officials sold Facebook on four key selling points:

1. The site sits on the nexus of an interstate fiber optic system, providing connectivity to the rest of the nation.
2. A power substation sits within half a mile of the campus.
3. Transportation access.
4. Environmental stability.

The last is an increasingly important consideration. Data-center providers that went down during Superstorm Sandy in New York last year learned that lesson well; hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and other natural disasters can bring a cloud services down just as effectively as a power outage. 

A Facebook blog post, meanwhile, cited “an abundance of wind-generated power” as well as proximity to “a great talent pool that will help build and operate the facility” as reasons for building in Altoona. Apparently, Des Moines and Ames are the new Silicon Valley and Boston when it comes to technical skills. The new facility will break ground this summer and begin serving traffic in 2014, Facebook said. According to the Register, Facebook’s facility “will join what’s becoming a data center corridor of sorts in Altoona. LightEdge was built in 2006, and Enseva will break ground this spring.”

Facebook hasn’t confirmed the size of its new data center, but the Register earlier this month claimed that planning documents put it at 1.4 million square feet and said Monday the total investment could hit $1.5 billion. That’s about four times the size of the company’s Prineville facility – and 50% larger than Apple’s $1 billion investment in its new data center in Maiden, North Carolina. 

Apple's data center in Maiden, N.C. (Source: Apple)

“In the coming years, as our service continues to grow and people share and connect in more ways, we need to make sure that our technical infrastructure also continues to scale,” Facebook’s Jay Parikh said in the blog post. “Our goal is not just to deliver you a fast, reliable experience on Facebook every day – we also want to help make connectivity a universal opportunity. Our data centers are essential for making that happen.”

How Facebook “Hacks” Its Data Centers

Facebook has put almost as much technology effort into its data centers as its core services. Earlier this year, Facebook disclosed that its Luleå facility would be entirely built on hardware constructed by no-name server manufacturers using designs developed by the Open Compute Project, which shuns “vanity” hardware sold by traditional server vendors like Dell and Hewlett-Packard in an effort to minimize cost. Rather than pay top dollar for the most sophisticated and powerful equipment, this kind of “open source hardware” approach adds capacity by just adding ever more cheap, generic servers.

(See also Can Servers Save PC Manufacturers? Sadly, No.)

Facebook's Lulea, Sweden data center. (Source: Facebook)

Facebook also has been a pioneer in using natural or ambient cooling its data centers. Traditionally, data centers place servers on raised floors cooled by mechanical “chillers,” or air conditioners, that push away heat from the servers to keep them running properly. 

Facebook’s Prineville facility uses a combination of evaporated water and ambient air to cool the servers without the need for energy-hogging chillers; its Swedish site uses the frigid near-Arctic air to do the same thing. (Google, meanwhile, is building a data center in Hamina, Finland, which pumps water – and exchanges heat – from a nearby canal.) Although Facebook hasn’t disclosed how its Altoona servers will be cooled, it’s likely to employ some form of evaporative cooling.

Last week, Facebook was the first to offer a near-real-time look at the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) — the all-important batting average of a data center’s energy efficiency  — of both its Prineville and Forest City facilities. A few years ago, a PUE of 1.8 was considered average; the Prineville facility’s PUE now regularly pushes below 1.10, close to the 1.0 ideal.

Lead image via Facebook.

Facebook is reportedly working on full-screen autoplay video ads it will supposedly roll out no later than this summer. Facebook is expected to charge nearly $1 million for these new ads, which are designed to leverage Facebook’s massive scale — but not the company’s vaunted “social graph.”

And that assumes Facebook users will sit still for ads that, per current reports, will take over your desktop screen and run for 15 seconds, up to three times a day per user. What are the odds of that? 

According to a report in Ad Age, the social media giant wants to offer at least four separate full-screen video ads every day. Facebook has reportedly been working with the ad industry on this effort since at least late last year. Initially, the 15-second autoplay ads will appear on Facebook’s desktop site; the social network is still working to bring them to its mobile app as well.

I contacted Facebook for comment. A spokesperson’s response: “We’re not giving a comment here.”

The Coming War With TV

If successful, the new ad platform could bring in nearly $1.5 billion in additional revenue to Facebook — and might also kick off a war with the television industry for major ad dollars.

Television advertising in the U.S. alone generates over $70 billion in annual revenue — and the market is, surprisingly, still growing. Facebook’s new ads, though, could pose a direct threat. One of the core strengths of television advertising is its ability to “aggregate eyeballs” — that is, to bring together large numbers of people across multiple demographics. Facebook’s proposed new ad units would emulate this.

For example, Facebook is expected to offer four daily “slots” for its video ads, each targeting a very large demographic:

• Women over 30
• Women under 30
• Men over 30
• Men under 30

According to Ad Age, Facebook will cap the ads so that no user will see an ad more than three times in a day. It is still unclear if advertising executives will want to cut down the typical 30-second television ad to fit Facebook’s 15-second guideline, or if they’d create new ads especially for Facebook.

Scale Not Social

For all its talk about the inherent value of its “social graph” — Facebook’s supposedly unique understanding of its one billion users, their likes, dislikes and relationships — these proposed video ads owe basically nothing to the social graph and in this case, Facebook is relying upon its nearly unprecedented scale. There are few online properties – or any media properties of any sort – that can command massive network television-like audiences the way Facebook can. The front page of Yahoo, YouTube and Google may be the only equivalents.

Such ads may also mark a strategic reversal inside Facebook. Just last summer, the company denied GM’s request for full-page “takeover” ads. At the time, Facebook’s VP for Global Marketing suggested that brands should focus on “social ads” and did not expect “traditional home-age takeover” ads in Facebook’s future. 

That is apparently no longer the case. Not that this is a bad thing. Facebook is probably wise to focus on new methods of monetizing its scale — and leveraging the potential of video display ads. If successful, such ads could even become a daily ritual — generating buzz that’s the equivalent of America’s Super Bowl.

Consider that for this year, 30-second Super Bowl ads on television cost advertisers $3.8 million. The event had 111 million viewers. Facebook may be able to promise its advertisers a far larger audience every day. What Facebook can’t yet promise, of course, is whether its billion users will actually sit through — or even tolerate — such intrusive ads, even just once.

Television Still Preferred For Now

Despite its scale, Facebook must prove it can offer advertisers the equivalent of network television. Consumer surveys reveal that television advertising stands above all others in terms of influencing purchase decisions. 

Even amongst college students, for example, who are likely to be very social media savvy, television advertising is clearly the most influential of all.

At least in theory, the combination of Facebook’s scale, a full-page video ad takeover and, in time, linking views and reactions to the platform’s “social graph” could turn the tide in Facebook’s favor. There are also obvious opportunities for Facebook to leverage its scale, social graph and the “second screen” to help foster innovative advertising forms that span television, mobile and the Facebook site simultaneously. Earlier this year, for example, Facebook promoted the Academy Awards broadcast and provided data on how users responded to award winners in real-time.

Facebook claims 680 million “active” monthly mobile users. If Facebook can leverage its scale across desktop and mobile, whether or not it simultaneously incorporate their knowledge of each user, these new video ads could be a huge success.

Lead image via Flickr user brewbooks

Facebook released an update to its iOS app today that brings one of Home’s strongest features—Chat Heads—to the iPhone and iPad. The bad news: Because Apple does not allow third-party apps to mess with its interface the way Google does with Android, Chat Heads is only accessible within the iOS Facebook app.

It’s a gutted version of the Android app, which strips away key features like mixing SMS text messages with Facebook messages and popping chats up on top of other apps. Those are what make Chat Heads special.

Alongside Chat Heads, the update allows users to buy and share “stickers” from the social network’s new Stickers Store—a feature recently introduced by Path, a mobile social app closely watched by Facebook’s designers and engineers. It also gives iPad users a tablet-specific version of the News Feed design overhaul announced in March.

The iPad update is out now. Chat Heads and Stickers features will be rolled out to iPhone users “fully over the next few weeks,” the company said in a press release. 

The New Look For iPad

For heavy iPad users, the News Feed update is a welcome upgrade. The tablet screen size allows for an almost exact replica of the new browser-based News Feed that Facebook recently announced. It strips away unnecessary sidebar noise from the News Feed and gives you a simple page of avatars and updates with a special focus on blown-up images. (ReadWrite’s Taylor Hatmaker makes a strong argument for why this might be both good and bad for users.)

(See also Chat Heads Will Be The SMS-Killer Facebook Has Been Looking For.)  

As for Chat Heads, it works great. Hitting the messaging button on the top tab and clicking on a name immediately pulls up a friend’s face in a Chat Heads bubble. You can add up to four bubbles before it begins automatically swapping out the bottom one. The feature that lets you collapse and move multiple chats works as advertised. It’s likely much better on the iPad than it will be on the iPhone given that you have more screen real estate and can keep Chat Heads active all the time. If you don’t want to get rid of Chat Heads, a circled ‘x’ shows up at the bottom of the screen when you hold down the bubble and flicking it down will remove it. 

A Strong First Step, And A Dilemma For Apple

While it may be a drag for iPhone and iPad users to have a subpar version of the Chat Heads experience, it’s a start. The big unknown is what’s coming in iOS 7, the next big version of Apple’s mobile software, which is expected to be out this summer. Will Apple allow not just Facebook but other developers to layer apps on top of each other, the way Google does in Android? Or will it maintain tight control over the experience and risk making Android the bleeding-edge playground for experiments like Chat Heads?

(See also Why Apple Really Needs To Kill It With iOS 7.)  

Apple has no easy choice here. It wants to have the best experience for consumers. But part of that experience is the sense that new apps with the coolest features come out for the iPhone first. If Chat Heads is the best mobile version of Facebook, and you can’t get it on the iPhone, where does that leave Apple? 

Update: Facebook has just released the iOS update for iPhone as of 12:01 p.m. PT. The update includes the in-app Chat Heads functionality and bakes in some aspects of the News Feed redesign that are more prominently visible in the iPad and browser versions of Facebook. 

Images courtesy of Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg is now wading into that thorniest of political issues: immigration reform. In an op-ed for the Washington Post last week, the Facebook CEO told the story of a young “aspiring entrepreneur” who may not be able to attend college because the boy is residing in the U.S. illegally. 

His family is from Mexico, and they moved here when he was a baby. Many students in my community are in the same situation; they moved to the United States so early in their lives that they have no memories of living anywhere else.

Such students, Zuck says, “are smart and hardworking, and they should be part of our future.”

Which is no doubt true. Only Zuckerberg’s very attachment to the issue colors the general public’s perception of it. Is “our future” — America’s future — truly aligned with that of a man whose net worth is approximately $10 billion?

Zuckerberg fails to fully make the case that the reforms he seeks — reforms that will, not surprisingly, directly benefit Facebook — are also good for most of America. This is a missed opportunity. So is Zuck’s failure to address underlying fears about Silicon Valley’s immigration agenda with concrete action, both at Facebook and his new lobbying outfit.

Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Talented Specialists

Fairly or not, by repeatedly linking the larger immigration issue with “the Internet,” as Zuckerberg does in his editorial, he appears less concerned with America’s future — or even the future of those children residing in the U.S. illegally — and more with boosting the value of his own Internet concern.

By comparison, note that Apple boasts of all the jobs it has helped create throughout the country — manufacturing, sales, engineering and transportation. “From the engineer who helped invent the iPad to the delivery person who brings it to your door.” Everybody wins. 

Even worse, Zuck’s editorial likely only serves to exacerbate the general population’s fears regarding the corporate takeover of the nation’s immigration policies. Consider his calls for more H-1B visas:

Why do we offer so few H-1B visas for talented specialists that the supply runs out within days of becoming available each year, even though we know each of these jobs will create two or three more American jobs in return? 

How does expanding the H-1B program help America and not just the Valley? Zuckerberg fails again to make a strong enough case.

Contrast Zuckerberg’s efforts with those of Laurene Powell, Steve Jobs’ widow. Powell is a long-time supporter of the Dream Act, which aims to provide a “path to citizenship” for children residing in the U.S. illegally, provided they graduate from college or serve in the military. (Their families, too.)

The majority of these students are not likely to work for Facebook or in the Valley — nor to ever require H-1B support. Powell and the Dream Act group repeatedly focus on both the larger moral issue of offering a path to citizenship and the overall benefit of reform to America’s economy.

In politics, especially, perception matters. Already, the New York Times has implied that those with H-1B visas are effectively “indentured.:”

Silicon Valley is battling in Washington to make the immigration process easier for thousands of people… many of them Indian engineers, while also pushing to hire many more guest workers from abroad. [Emphasis mine.]

How many underemployed engineers in the American midwest, for example, read those words and reflexively thought that Silicon Valley is on the hunt for cheap labor and nothing more?

Similarly, Om Malik writes that Zuckerberg’s focus on “technology and innovation centric changes doesn’t take into account the harsh reality of post industrial society & its invisible victims.”

InfoWorld, however, was blunt: “American tech workers lose out in H-1B lottery.”

If Congress answers the tech industry’s calls to raise the numbers of visas, it could lead to a hemorrhaging of American tech jobs.

How Zuck Could Really Lead The Way

In conjunction with the editorial, Zuckerberg and a veritable who’s who of Silicon Valley have launched FWD.us (pronounced Forward U.S.), a lobbying group whose mission is to promote “comprehensive immigration reforms.” 

FWD.us is calling for the following:

1. Comprehensive immigration reform that begins with effective border security, allows a path to citizenship and lets us attract the most talented and hardest-working people, no matter where they were born.
2. Higher standards and accountability in schools, support for good teachers and a much greater focus on learning about science, technology, engineering and math.
3. Investment in breakthrough discoveries in scientific research and assurance that the benefits of the inventions belong to the public and not just to the few.

These are all lofty goals.

But to make their case with both the American people and Washington politicos, Zuck and his compatriots need to reach out to the rest of country and to demonstrate how “what’s good for Silicon Valley is good for America.” So far, this hasn’t been the case.

Perhaps instead of building a massive new Valley headquarters, Facebook should instead first build the world’s greatest telecommuting platform. Not everyone capable of helping Valley companies can live in the Valley.

FWD.us could also work aggressively to welcome and then train America’s older engineers to code for Facebook and other Valley companies. For instance, it should consider supporting these short-term “coding boot camps” across the country.

The organization can better reveal how their proposed policy changes offer direct benefit outside as well as inside the Valley. Show how “job creation” is not simply defined as a high-paying professional job in the Valley, for example. Rather, detail how such jobs create opportunity that quickly reverberates across the larger economy. 

The issue of immigration reform, for the Valley and for America, is simply too important to allow it to be viewed as nothing more than another corporate lobbying effort.

Image of Mark Zuckerberg courtesy of Flickr. Ellis Island photo courtesy of Wikimedia

If Mark Zuckerberg is to inherit the mantle as the next Steve Jobs, he’s going to have to do better when it comes to advertising. These new Facebook Home ads, for example, don’t make me want to rush out and get Home on my phone. Rather, they make me think that we would all have much more fun if we turned off Facebook entirely and lived our lives like those we follow.

This seems like exactly the wrong message.

The first ad, “Airplane,” features a man on a plane, away from home – get it? Only, not really, because “Home” brings his friends and family to him. In his case, that means transvestites, a naughty little boy, his buddies at the beach and someone I assume is his wife – with a serious thing for cats. He’s the normal one.

It’s fun. Only, has “normal” ever helped sell anything?

Next up is “Dinner.”

The message here is plain: your family is boring; really, really boring. Even when the family is seated around the dinner table, it’s best if you pull out your phone and watch what all your cool friends are up to. Spoiler alert: it’s way better than whatever you are doing. Unlike Airplane, there is nothing good about this ad.

Finally, we have “Launch Day.” It’s as much a playful look inside Facebook as it is an actual advertisement. Zuckerberg appears in this video – and does just fine. That Facebook employees would rather be “on Facebook” than listening to Zuckerberg speak is actually pretty funny. This is the best of the bunch. Although it still strikes me as odd that even the young, possibly rich “hackers” working at Facebook are all so boring compared to their friends. 

Where are all these beautiful people? Maybe we could be like them – even with them – if we didn’t spend all our time on Facebook?

That’s no way to advertise a cool new service.

And will any business approve a Facebook Home phone now that even Facebook is telling everyone that work comes second?

Perhaps what Facebook is attempting to do is send this message: what your friends are doing – right this moment – is so cool, so odd, so outrageous, so much fun that you have to stay in constant contact with them. That’s a pretty good message, actually. Only these ads do not make that at all clear; at least, not nearly as effectively as they could.

There is a free-spirited, playful quality buried within each of these ads, unable to come out. I wanted to like them all. But the overall tone, unfortunately, is more wistful. It’s like discovering that the person driving in front of you with the “I’d Rather Be Fishing” bumper sticker lives a rather sad life all the times when he is not out fishing. Nobody wants that.

Facebook Home has several innovative features and has received generally positive reviews. Mark Zuckerberg has called Home “the best version of Facebook there is.” There is a great deal riding on its success. I do not believe these ads will help.

Image taken from Facebook Home “Airplane” ad.

You find yourself drunk and alone at the local pub – too nervous to talk to the people around you. You pull out your smartphone. You tap the Facebook app. You update your status: ”Party hard!”

A few moments pass. Still drunk, still alone, still nervous, you return to Facebook: “You guys missed out on an awesome time!” with a photo of your drained glass.

Anxiety & Alcohol Predict Facebook Use

Apparently, this scenario is more common than you might think. It turns out that being drunk and scared makes you want to use Facebook more. In fact, anxiety and alcohol use significantly predict usage and “emotional connectedness to Facebook.” For college freshmen, anyway.

For his master’s thesis, Missouri University doctoral student Russell Clayton surveyed 229 college freshmen students living in dorms. He asked them to rank their perceived levels of loneliness, anxiety, alchohol use and marijuana use, then measured their “connectedness” to Facebook.

Clayton found that students who reported higher levels of anxiousness and alcohol use “appeared to be more emotionally connected with Facebook.” What’s more, “people who perceive themselves to be anxious (in general) are more likely to want to meet and connect with people online, as opposed to a more social, public setting.”

Numerous studies show anxiety is rising in American society, and Facebook – along with its advertisers – could make out like bandits. For example, Clayton’s survey revealed that students with a stronger emotional connectedness to Facebook became “more motivated” to drink just by viewing friends’ pictures and statuses showing them drinking.

Paging the Bud Light advertising team!

Pot Smokers Love Facebook Less

Oddly enough, this wouldn’t work for those selling or advertising marijuana over Facebook – if it were legal. According to the research, marijuana use “predicted the opposite: a lack of emotional connectedness with Facebook.” According to Clayton, “Marijuana use was negatively related to emotional connectedness to Facebook and unrelated to Facebook connection strategies. This indicates that the more a participant engages in marijuana use the less emotionally connected they feel toward Facebook.”

The reason for the difference? Clayton posits that marijuana usage is “much less of a social process,” unlike drinking beer and alcohol.

The study did not examine other social media platforms. Too bad. It would be great to know, for example, if there is a correlation between marijuana use and connectedness to Instagram, for example. Or if people who are generally less prone to anxiety prefer MySpace to Facebook. Do humanities students who drink too much have a Twitter account?  

Study Notes: Participants in Clayton’s study had on average between 301-400 Facebook friends. The average time spent on Facebook per day was nearly one hour.

Emotional connectedness was defined as “how emotionally attached students feel toward Facebook.” To gauge this, students were asked to rate on a 7-point scale their response to the question “If Facebook shut down, I would be sad.”  

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock. Smoking image courtesy of Flickr.

Facebook did not just launch a “Facebook Phone” last week, as was expected. Instead, along with the HTC First, it offered up Home, a “family of apps” that is neither a phone nor a smartphone operating system – but which may ultimately have a far greater impact on the mobile industry than either one of those things.

Facebook Home overlays a visually appealing “Cover Feed” onto the Android smartphone home screen. The Facebook member’s Newsfeed, pictures, texts, select notifications and “Chat Heads” of their friends are all displayed. If the Facebook Home user is inside another app – any other app – and receives a Facebook Message from a friend, for example, a “Chat Head” – the friend’s face and message – pops up on the phone screen. While not a true operating system, Home becomes the de facto user experience.

Though Home will be available only on select Android models when it debuts on Friday, April 12, it has the long-term potential to shake up everything from Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone to mobile carriers and handset makers. Especially when you consider that Facebook has more than 1 billion members, and is on more than 600 million mobile devices – including approximately 200 million Android smartphones and 150 million iPhones.  

First, let’s look at the losers.

Loser: Apple

For all the talk of how Facebook Home could potentially disintermediate Google from its own Android operating system, Home’s clearest threat may be to Apple’s lucrative iPhone business. Indeed, during the Facebook Home launch, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg mocked Apple’s “there’s an app for that” user interface: “We’re not building a phone, and we’re not building an OS — we’re building an experience that’s deeper than any other app.” If Facebook Home succeeds, expect iPhone sales to be harmed. The iPhone’s operating system may begin to look dated, and customers may seek out those devices that offer Home – and for the foreseeable future, that means Android-only. 

Loser: Mobile Carriers

Facebook is already promoting Home’s robust texting features, and Facebook Home is obviously a legitimate threat to the carrier’s lucrative SMS (texting) business. According to the Wall Street Journal, for years carriers have relied on SMS for “the bulk of their revenue” but “the rise of texting apps has taken away $23 billion in revenue from carriers as of the end of 2012.”

Facebook Home takes direct aim at the carriers’ SMS revenues. ReadWrite’s Nick Statt considers Home’s “Chat Heads” feature to be an “SMS killer.“

“Chat Heads give Facebook a subtle way to nudge users away from (carrier) SMS and towards its own platform,” Statt wrote, “This move finally establishes Facebook Message as a serious player in the field of SMS-killers, and the most disruptive one to date. Its success, or failure, will likely reverberate throughout the mobile world.”

Loser: Handset Makers

Apple and Samsung take the lion’s share of the smartphone handset market’s profits – by far. All other smartphone handset makers are struggling to stand out, much less eke out a profit. If customers are happy with any Android device that runs Facebook Home, handset makers will no doubt have an even harder time differentiating themselves. If customers gravitate to the lowest priced devices – as long as they run Home – handset makers may find it impossible to make any money.

Loser: Google

At least publicly, Google has welcomed Facebook Home to its Android platform:

The Android platform has spurred the development of hundreds of different types of devices. This latest device demonstrates the openness and flexibility that has made Android so popular.

But Facebook Home is also a big challenge to Android’s business model. Android’s primary revenue generating services, including Search, Maps, Gmail and YouTube, are typically pre-loaded onto sanctioned Android devices. The more Android devices, the more people access Google services, the more revenues Google generates. 

Should Facebook Home effectively replace or block access to Google services, the Google Android strategy could take a massive hit. 

Industry analyst and venture capitalist Jean-Louis Gassee, put it this way:

Facebook’s new Home on Android smartphone is an audacious attempt to demote the OS to a utility role, to keep to itself user data Android was supposed to feed into Google’s advertising business. Google’s reaction will be worth watching.

Loser: App Developers

Facebook formally describes Home as “a completely new experience that lets you see the world through people, not apps.” Beyond the promotional language, Home poses a threat to Android app developers, as it essentially hides all other apps beneath the Facebook Home screen. In the world of Facebook Home, apps are relegated to second-tier status. (And should a Facebook Home user call up their apps, they are listed in alphabetical order, not by user preference.)

According to the latest Canalys app store research, apps generate more than $2 billion every quarter, and 51% of all apps downloaded last quarter were on Google Play. This means that Facebook Home could have a massive impact on these app developers, in particular. 

Sore Loser: Microsoft

The day after Facebook announced Home, Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications, mocked Facebook for essentially copying Microsoft’s Windows Phone look and “people first” design ethos. “While we applaud Facebook for working to give some Android owners a taste of what a ‘people-centric’ phone can be like, we’d humbly like to suggest that you get the real thing, and simply upgrade to a Windows Phone.” Corporate snark aside, if Windows Phone was selling in adequate numbers, than no doubt Facebook – which Microsoft has invested in – would have seen fit to devote resources and mindshare to the platform.

But Facebook Home isn’t all bad news, of course. There are plenty of winners, too:

Winner: HTC

The first device to come with Facebook Home pre-installed is from HTC – the HTC First. Once one of the larger players in the Android market, HTC has fallen on hard times. It’s close relationship with Facebook and first-mover status on Home could help the struggling device maker. Certainly, it can’t hurt.

(See also “HTC’s Financial Woes Put Pressure on Microsoft & Facebook.”)

Winner: Google 

Yes, Facebook Home threatens Google. But it also offers opportunity. Because Home is Android only, at least for the foreseeable future, there is a real possibility that Home will spur Android sales. 

At Home’s launch, Mark Zuckerberg stated: “I actually think this is really good for Android.” Zuckerberg noted that despite Android’s larger market share, app developers typically flock to Apple’s iOS first. He claimed that Home could spur “more innovation” to flow to the Android ecosystem, enticing app makers to do their best work there. It’s hard to see why those app makers would want their wares buried under Facebook Home, but who knows?

Winner: Facebook

Facebook has no “phone” and no smartphone operating system. It’s revenues from mobile devices remain meager compared to Google and Apple. Home could help change all that. Home proves that Facebook hasn’t just embraced “mobile first,” but as Zuckerberg put it at the launch event, “Mobile Best… We think this is the best version of Facebook there is.” Unlike earlier versions of Facebook for mobile, Home is appealing and accessible. Facebook is clearly the biggest winner from Facebook Home. 

Image of Facebook Home courtesy of Facebook.

Perhaps the most intriguing announcement to come out of the Facebook Home unveil last Thursday was the social network’s overhaul of messaging, called Chat Heads. While not a phrase you’ll want to be caught saying in public very often, the service’s title is self-explanatory: The faces of the friends you’re communicating with through both text messages and Facebook messaging appear in little movable bubbles that follow you to any app on your smartphone.

On the surface, it sounds like little more than a blatant attempt to boost use of Facebook Message – the service’s email, texting and instant messaging feature – but Chat Heads is actually of one of Home’s most appealing and important features. Not only does it build-in an already viable alternative to the many messaging apps currently on the market, but it also manages to do for Facebook and Android what iMessage does for Apple and iOS. 

Chat Heads Offer Alternative To SMS

In other words, Chat Heads give Facebook a subtle way to nudge users away from SMS and towards its own platform – without seeming like the same evil overlord that changed all its members’ default email address last summer.

This move finally establishes Facebook Message as a serious player in the field of SMS-killers, and the most disruptive one to date. Its success, or failure, will likely reverberate throughout the mobile world.

(See also Facebook Home: A Facebook Phone & A New Facebook Mobile Experience.)

Granted, Chat Heads’ effectiveness is entirely contingent on the adoption rate of Facebook Home. After all, only those who indulge in obsessive Facebook use will really be gung-ho about jumping in the deep end with Home when it debuts on the Google Play store on April 12.

But if Home takes off, Chat Heads will undoubtedly prove to be one of the social network’s most valuable assets. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s intentions are to increase the visibility and longterm use of Facebook Message – eclipsing all other services. Chat Heads could help him succeed.

Messaging Anywhere, Anytime… For Real This Time

Chat Heads’ strength lies in its ease of use. While many messaging services like to promote themselves as “seamless,” allowing for anytime, anywhere messaging, Chat Heads can actually back up that claim. There’s no app to launch or multi-tasking menu bar to flip through. You can place the chat bubble anywhere on your display, or just flick it away when you need the screen real estate for something else.

Taking a page from Apple’s iMessage book, the only thing that differentiates a message in Chat Heads from a SMS message is the color of the text bubble (green for text message, blue for Facebook Message). This functionality also plays into one of Facebook Home’s core strengths – the ubiquitousness of the social network while using the skin. 

(See also Is Apple’s iMessage Killing Texting After All?)

Obviously, having Home on your Android phone means you want to use Facebook as much as possible. But by bundling SMS and Facebook Message into Chat Heads, the social network is playing on your constant exposure to wean you off SMS and and onto Facebook Message. 

Since Chat Heads works works with SMS as well as Facebook Message, there’s really no reason why Home user won’t slide into the habit of replacing texts with Chat Heads. 

SMS Is King, But Facebook Message Is More Flexible

When Facebook rolled up its Chat and Message service into one platform back in 2010, some users were outraged. It stripped away the email-style “get-to-this-when-you-can” feel of Message in favor of Chat’s quick back-and-forth, instant messaging style of communication.

But in making this switch, which most users eventually accepted, Facebook created a middle ground to build a substantial SMS competitor. After two years of growth, Facebook Message is now a platform to be reckoned with, and therein lays Chat Heads’ true power. 

By not having to define itself as a texting alternative, an email-killer or an AOL IM revival service, Facebook Message exists as all three simultaneously, depending on whom you happen to be talking to. You don’t really have to think about whether you need to use an outside app to send an email (a communication means that Facebook Home has completely buried in its interface), or which method may be best for a particular purpose. You can simply use Chat Heads to talk to anyone you know, and interact with them on whatever level you deem necessary. 

Like other alternative messaging services, Facebook Message is free, imposes no character limits and offers easy multimedia sharing. Add its visual attractiveness, ability to handle multiple conversations and flexibility as an email-text-IM hybrid and its easy to see how powerful Chat Heads could be. 

Android-Only Is Its Only Weakness

The most obvious hurdle facing Chat Heads as a true SMS alternative is the fact that iPhone owners won’t be using it anytime soon. That means iMessage will still reign supreme for iDevices, and will keep its own share of the messaging service market intact. Of course, Zuckerberg would love to have an Apple version of Facebook Home, but that ball is in Cupertino’s court. At last week’s Facebook Home launch, Zuckerberg said that putting Home on iOS would require Apple’s cooperation in ways that working with Android did not – although Facebook was in contact with Google over the project. Apple hasn’t commented, but history has not been kind to moves that could wrest ecosystem control away from the Apple. 

That is a bummer. As an iPhone user, I’d love the opportunity to try Facebook Home, if only to check out Chat Heads. In a broader sense, an Apple version of Facebook Home would be a devastating blow to SMS as well as iMessage – all the more reason why Apple likely will never allow it. But even on Android alone, Facebook Home and Chat Heads could soon be the biggest, baddest new player in the messaging wars. 

Lead image by Fredric Paul.

I readily admit what many men might be afraid to say: I fundamentally do not understand women. Not on a personal level, a professional level, a relationship level or really any level. The more I learn about women, the less I actually understand.

I think most women who know me would agree with this statement.

I know things. I know, for instance, that women on average make 77 cents to every dollar a man makes. I know that women are a minority in leadership positions in government and business. I know these things like I know that Jacoby Ellsbury is a pretty good centerfielder for the Boston Red Sox. I know, but I do not understand the how or the why.

What Did I Understand? Not A Damn Thing

So, when I found myself sitting at the Harvard Club in Boston listening to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg talking about her new book Lean In, I told myself that I know what she is talking about.

You know what? I don’t know a goddamn thing. 

Without knowing, I cannot understand. I cannot understand why there are less women in the field of technology. I cannot understand why there are less women technology journalists. I cannot understand that women face different external perspectives than a man in the work place and that, in turn, changes the dynamic of how they attain leadership or are perceived by coworkers.

Sandberg asked for a raise of hands from the crowd at the Harvard Club. First, she asked the men, “Has anybody ever told you that you were too aggressive at work?” A few men, including me, raised our hands. Most did not. Then she asked the same question of the women in the crowd.

Laura Fitton, evangelist at HubSpot, asks a question of Sandberg at The Harvard Club

Nearly every woman — a group filled with startup employees, marketers, public relations people and developers — raised her hand. This was a surprise for me. I am either completely naïve or conditioned to the gender stereotypes of our time. Probably both.

What Did I Learn? A Lot

Sandberg related a story about a performance review of a woman employee at Facebook. The performance review had labeled the employee as “too aggressive.”

“I took that performance review back to the people that gave it, both men and women and I said to them ‘can you tell me what she did that was too aggressive?’ And they answered,” Sandberg said. “Then I said to them, if a man had done exactly those same things would you have thought he was too aggressive? And to a person, they said no.”

Lean In is filled with anecdotes like these, presented to drive home how much of the inequality facing women in the workplace starts with misperception based on gender stereotypes and social conditioning. 

Sandberg writes:

Professional ambition is expected of men but is optional — or worse, sometimes even a negative — for women. “She is very ambitious” is not a compliment in our culture. Aggressive and hard-charging women violate unwritten rules about acceptable social conduct. Men are continually applauded for being ambitious and powerful and successful, but women who display these same traits often pay a social penalty. Female accomplishment comes at a cost.

In order to change something, you first must understand it. That is not always easy, especially when it comes to centuries of conditioned behavior such as gender stereotypes. It takes a high degree of self perception and awareness to realize that you don’t know or understand something. Sometimes that realization comes as a hard smack in the face, as it did with me listening to Sandberg speak at the Harvard Club.

“As men get more powerful and successful, everybody likes them better. Men and women,” Sandberg said. “As women become more successful, everyone likes them less. If we can begin to understand that, we can change it.”

Photos by Britta Schellenberg courtesy of Brightcove

Facebook Home, which Facebook has described both as “a new way to turn your Android phone into a great, living, social phone” and “the best version of Facebook there is,” won’t be available on Apple’s iPhone anytime soon, if ever. Does Apple care?

Probably not, although it should. More than an app, though not quite a operating system, Facebook Home delivers a highly visual, system-wide presentation of real-time social data that also makes innovative use of touch-based gestures. In the process, it makes iOS look, well, dated.

Jony Ive, call your office.

Why Apple Shouldn’t Worry About Home

In the short term, Apple has relatively little to fear. Tech blogger and Apple enthusiast Dan Frommer, for instance, argues that Apple retains a “big lead in hardware and OS quality, apps, media, and customer service” — and that as a result, we shouldn’t expect to see iPhone users bolt to Facebook phones, at least not yet. Instead, he figures Facebook Home will likely appeal to buyers of low-end Android devices.

(See also: Facebook Home: A Slick Interface & A Big Challenge)

Mobile analyst Benedict Evans told me:

The barriers to switching between platforms are pretty large: a slightly easier way to access Facebook Messenger won’t be enough to make people make the switch. That’s particularly the case for iPhone, which has a 70-80% repurchase intention rate.

Similarly, from Asymco analyst Horace Dediu:

In the phone business there are three things which define a product’s volume: distribution, distribution and distribution. Home is a more ambitious version of an app (designed to extract more from the user) and so it is more constrained in all three areas. It needs “permission” from device makers, platform vendors and operators in order to proliferate. End user installation is an option but it’s not likely to drive large volumes.

(See also: Facebook Home Could Be A Pain, Unless You Really Love Facebook)

Dediu’s quick analysis of Home leads him to believe that it could drive up to 10 million units a year. That’s not nothing, of course, but still a pittance compared to the approximately 48 million iPhones Apple sold just last quarter.

Why Apple Should Worry About Home

Home, however, could have a significant long-term impact on iPhone’s app-centric user interface. This might be to Apple’s benefit.

(See also: Why Apple Really, Really Needs To Kill It With iOS 7)

At yesterday’s Home launch, Mark Zuckerberg oh-so-delicately suggested that iOS — iPhone’s operating system — is looking a bit out-of-touch these days: 

Instead of our phones being designed around apps first, what if we flip that around? What if our phones were designed around people first?

Indeed, Home’s innovative system-wide presentation and highly visual user experience may even serve as a guide to Apple design guru Jonathan Ive. 

Facebook Home effectively takes over a device’s lock screen, populating it in real-time with the user’s Newsfeed, photo stream and Facebook-sanctioned notifications. Updates from the user’s Facebook contacts, or a Facebook message, for example, are revealed instantly no matter what app is active through the clever use of “chat heads.”

Chat heads also supports texting and messaging from within another (non-Facebook) app. Facebook Home’s notifications include the individual’s profile picture and can be displayed in a card-like fashion. 

These are visually appealing features which are not available in the iPhone. 

Here’s Zuckerberg belaboring the point yesterday:

We’re not building a phone, and we’re not building an OS — we’re building an experience that’s deeper than any other app.

Apple Is Playing Catch-Up

You have to assume that Ive and Apple’s iOS design team are poring over every detail Zuckerberg and company revealed yesterday. Earlier this week, Apple bloggers such as Mark Gurman, M.G. Siegler, Rene Richie and John Gruber discussed ways Apple might update iOS on the discussion site Branch. Consider these snippets from their public conversation: 

Apple should use WWDC to introduce and explain new functionality… and improve iOS inter-app communication. Admit that some things sucked/sucks. 

(Design chief Jony) Ive’s work is apparently making many people really happy, but will also apparently make rich-texture-loving designers sad.

Ive getting his hands on the UI might alter the consumer-facing bullet points, but probably not the API’s that were planned.

Ive is pushing a more “flat design” that is starker and simpler, according to developers who have spoken to Apple employees but didn’t have further details. Overall, they expect any changes to be pretty conservative.

There is clearly an opportunity for Apple to maintain its closed platform while still supporting greater inter-app communications, more robust developer access to the lock-screen, multi-modal personal communications, and the effective integration of data and contacts across apps, just like Home.

While iPhone hardware has clearly evolved, a 2008 iPhone user would feel immediately at home with iOS in 2013. There is good in such stability – and it is a testament to how much Apple got right, and how far ahead of the competition it was upon launch. However, as our smartphones do more and play a larger role in people’s lives, Apple cannot stand still – nor be perceived as standing still.

Images screencapped from the Facebook Home live event

Facebook Home is something we’ve never seen before. It’s far more than just an app and beyond just a skin, but something less than an operating system. It doesn’t replace Android or skins like TouchWiz, but installing it will radically transform your Android phone — and not necessarily for the better.

What Home boils down to is this: if you’re obsessed with Facebook, Home is for you. But if you’d like to use your Android phone for something else — like checking email, for example — you’ll probably find Home more trouble than it’s worth.

Facebook launched Home at a press event on Thursday. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, described it as a way to redesign the phone for “people first,” rather than the apps that dominate the rest of the smartphone universe.

If you’d like to try out Home, you have two options: wait until April 12 and download it from Google Play, or buy the HTC First for $99, the first phone with Home embedded within it. If you choose to download, be aware that Home will only run on the HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung’s Galaxy S3 and Note 2, and the forthcoming HTC One and Galaxy S4, Facebook said.

Facebook allowed the press to look at both the HTC First as well as phones running the Home software following the press event. While many weren’t allowed to touch the phone, product managers encouraged me to play around with the downloadable Home app running on a Galaxy S3. I also tested the First, albeit briefly.

Home Feels Like Home

Home interjects itself from the first moment you pick up your phone. On the unlock screen, Home displays the first entry in what Facebook calls its Cover Feed: full-screen, vertically-oriented photos with text from a status message overlaid. Swiping left and right brings up new entries.

You can think of Cover Feed as an Instapaper-like view of your News Feed, emphasizing photos and status messages. You won’t see video, group posts, or even ads — yet. But Facebook promises almost monthly updates, so plan on additional features to be added in the future. Who wants to bet that ads will one day be one of those additions?

Hey! Apps! Nope, they're shortcuts.

Clearly, this “home” slice of “Home” is the easiest to use, and the most enjoyable. Even if you have a just a few seconds, you can quickly swipe left and right to bring up new updates, double-tap an image to Like it, and add a comment by clicking the icon at the bottom of the screen. Sliding from image to image was effortless, at least on both the First and the Note II.

Note that this is Facebook’s domain: there are no widgets, no app shortcuts, and no Google search bar at the top of the screen. If you want those, you’ll have to work for it.

Home also displays a small, circular icon at the bottom of the screen with an image of your face inside it, as a starting point for further navigation. If you want to launch a Web browser, swipe right; swipe left to launch Facebook Messenger, and swipe up to access your “apps”.

Swiping right brings up the stock Web browser — no problems there. Swiping left brings up Messenger, where you can text and message your friends. If you’re on a cellular connection, those Messages will be sent via SMS, which highlights them in blue. (Or so the product-demo person at the event told me. No, I don’t see why it couldn’t send Facebook messages via cellular data, either.)

But Facebook Home also includes both notifications and something called “Chat Heads,” which can follow you from app to app. If you happen to be listening to Spotify, for example, and your friend pings you, their “head” — a circular icon with their picture — shows up and you can begin chatting. You can engage in multiple conversations with different friends via different “tabs,” each keyed to a chat head.

Messenger looks the same.

Home also sends you notifications for friends who Like your posts, which will pop up on your screen. Home has a nifty trick for dismissing them all at once: just hold down your finger on the screen, and they’ll converge like hungry fish. They then can be “thrown” off of the screen. 

"Chat Heads"

I suppose some may be nonplussed by chat and notification icons popping up randomly, but most Facebook addicts will probably love these features. It’s when you bring apps into the equation that things get a little awkward.

You Can Log Off, But You Can (Almost) Never Leave

Why? Because accessing other apps implies that you want to look away from Facebook. Facebook doesn’t want you to leave; part of the value Facebook ascribes to itself is its engagement with the user. When you swipe up to access apps, you don’t really access “apps” — a small window of “shortcuts” to the apps themselves appear. And at the top of the window is the familiar “status” and “photo” shortcuts.

In other words, you haven’t actually left Home; you’re just in its antechamber.

Home does allow you to access your full list of apps, arranged alphabetically. At the very bottom is a “More” icon. Clicking that takes you back to your home screen — except this time, you’re within the Android/TouchWiz/HTC Sense environment. Congratulations — you’ve escaped.

As you might have figured out, Home wants to monopolize your attention, so that any other function your phone wishes to perform — such as notifying you of an email, for example — gets treated as an intrusion.

Options screen.

 

No E-Mail For You!

This is where experience on phones like the HTC First diverge from phones built around the Home app. The First notifies users of incoming emails (or Google Talk requests, as I saw) via notifications. On a phone which uses a Home app, the Android status bar at the top of the screen does the same thing, before being banished by Home. Functionally, it’s almost the same thing. But inside Home, you tend to forget about the “outside world” of Android.

This, to me, feels like the “catch” of Facebook Home. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was asked whether he felt that Google would tolerate Home, since it essentially domnates the screen real estate that Google has traditionally regarded as its own.

It’s “theoretically possible,” Zuckerberg said, that Google would go back on its “promise of openness”. Zuckerberg also described Apple as a partner, but iOS as a “very controlled environment” — the implication being that Home on top of iOS is a pipe dream.

Google representatives said that they consider Home to be a “launcher,” a way of recasting Google’s Android. Does it bury Google content to the point that it’s hidden? I think so. So far, it doesn’t matter: “The Android platform has spurred the development of hundreds of different types of devices,” Google said in a statement. “This latest device demonstrates the openness and flexibility that has made Android so popular.”

But it’s significant, I think, that Facebook has already shown that its mobile apps can be downloaded outside the Google Play store. If in fact Google tries to ban Facebook, Facebook may be able to pursue alternative means of distribution. 

Should you download Home? Absolutely. You’ll need to most recent updates to Facebook and Messenger to do so. But make sure that when you launch Home, you choose the option to run Home once, to try it out. Home will blow you away the first time you use it, but I think its appeal will wane for all but the most social users.

The journalists, analysts and camera crews queued up in a chilly rain at Facebook’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters to get the first look at Facebook’s new home on Android – the long-rumored Facebook Phone.

The Hype Was Heavy

Would it be new “skin” software designed to put Facebook front and center on any Android device? Or an actual device in of itself – the rumor mill suggested HTC – built from the ground up to feature the social networking giant. Or would it be something completely new and unexpected?

Everyone wanted to know. Heck, the local newsradio station – not known for its tech savvy – gushed breathlessly about the event – right before talking about President Obama’s visit to the Bay Area.

But when Mark Zuckerberg walked on stage, it became clear we’re talking about both! “Today we’re finally going to talk about the Facebook phone,” Zuckerberg said. But that phone, the HTC First, is really just a reference model for the best integration of the Facebook Home software that can be downloaded onto any modern Android phone (starting April 12).

What Is Facebook Home?

According to Zuckerberg, Facebook Home consists of a few key capabilities designed to put people, not apps, first. “Today, our phones are designed aroundapps, not people” Zuckerberg said. “And we want to flip that around.” He compared the change to adding Newsfeed to Facebook’s website, where people started consuming about twice as much content overnight, he said. “We want to bring this experience right to your phone, and deliver it to as many poeple as possible.”

There are three key components: Cover Feed, Chat Heads and Notifications.

Cover Feed: Replacing the home and/or lock screen of an Android device, it gives you an immersive experience from the moment you turn on your phone, said Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s director of product. Instead of seeing a clock and maybe a snippet of a notification, you see your Facebook Open Graph stories with large images cycling across the screen. News shares, status updates (use the poster’s cover photo as the background) are visible right from the get got. You can do a long press to see the whole picture or swipe to get to the next one. You can even add comments right from the home screen, seen below.

Chat Heads: These little round bubbles with the images of your friends shown below are the metaphor for Facebook Home’s way of keeping you up to date on what your friends are saying. Incorporating Facebook messaging and texting, you just tap on the Head to join the conversation. (Group conversations smuch all the participant’s pictures into the bubble, slightly awkwardly.) The key here is that Chat Heads show up everywhere on the phone, not just in a dedicated app. They’re always available – the little Heads show up in the corner of the screen no matter what else you’re doing, and follow along when you move to a new app. (You can just flick them away if you want to get rid of them.)

Notifications: If Chat Heads are about connecting to what’s important to you, Zuckerberg said, Notifications are there to make sure you don’t miss critical information – along with the name and face of the person who’s sending you the message. Unfortunately, with the download version at least, Facebook Home will not support notifications of emails, but you can still use the native Android notification bar. It’s not as pretty, but it’s still effective – something may not matter to high-school kids, but it may to the older professionals who also make up a big part of Facebook’s member base.

Finally, Facebook Home adds a new app launcher, for when you still want to use your phone the old-fashioned way. Apps are really important too, so we wanted to make it just as easy to get to your apps. The app launcher is just one swipe away from your home or lock screen.

Many, but not all, of these features can be switched on or off, the company said.

How Big A Deal Is Facebook Home?

While Facebook home is not a complete mobile operating system, it’s not some lightweight app, either. “We’re not building a phone, and we’re not building an operating system, but we’re also building something a lot deeper than just an app,” Zuckerberg said. “We wanted this to feel like system software, not just an app that your run. We feel like theres a higher bar for that…”

That’s critical, because people spend a lot of time on Facebook on their mobile phones. Some 20% of the time people spend on their smartphones is spent with Facebook – 25% if you include Instragram, the company said. And that’s three times as much as with any other app.

Still, while Zuckerberg claimed that people look at Facebook 10-12 times a day, they look at the home screen of their phone 100 times a day. Facebook Home brings the social network much closer to the user – and could be expected to seriously up Facebook’s engagment time for those who use it.

It also expands on Facebook’s Mobile First mantra to what Zuckerberg called “Mobile Best.” “We think this is the best version of Facebook there is.”

The Facebook Phone

Facebook Home will be available for free download from the Google Play store on April 12, but that’s only part of the story. Facebook Home is also the HTC First (seen on the left, below), available the same day for $99.99 exclusively from AT&T – pre-orders start today.

As the first phone with Facebook Home built in, the HTC First offers deeper integration than the downloadable version. The key, Zuckerberg said, is that users don’t have to download anything or sign in to anything to get started. In addition, the built-in integration means Facebook Home can (unlike the downloadable version) incorporate notifications from other apps, such as email or Spotify. The email issue, particularly, will be a big deal to some people.

What’s Next For Facebook Home?

The April 12 launch date is only the beginning for Facebook Home. Zuckerberg promised that like all Facebook software, it will be updated monthly (not yearly like mobile operating systems). Updates will likely expand Cover Feed to include video, group joins, friending stories and other actions.

Another thing to expect? Ads. While Zuckerberg said there would not be ads in Cover Feed at launch, he didn’t dispute a question that they could be added at a later date.

It also makes sense to expect more smartphones with Facebook Home built in. The company made no mention of an exclusive arrangement with HTC or AT&T. The company also promised a tablet version of Facebook home within the next few months. As for a version of Facebook Home for the iPhone and iPad, Zuckerberg was non-committal. That will require working with Apple, he said, in ways that talking to Google wasn’t necessary to do the Android version.

And that could actually make some waves in the mobile platform wars. “I actually think this is really good for Android,” Zuckerberg said. Even though there are more Android phones out there, he explained, a lot of people do their best work on iphone first. “This could bring more innovation to Android.”

Facebook will be working to lead that. “This is a deeply technical problem, and its also a deeply social problem,” Zuckerberg said, adding that his company is uniquely positioned to deal with that combination.

Images courtesy of Facebook. Lead image by Fredric Paul.

Facebook is set to announce its new “Home” on Android today at its campus in Menlo Park, California. Will it be a Facebook Phone? An application layer for all Android devices? We will find out soon enough.

ReadWrite managing editor Fred Paul is on the ground for the announcement. Follow Fred on Twitter and and the official ReadWrite Twitter account for updates. 

Join the conversation, let us know what you think of Facebook’s announcement in the comments.

Update: The event has ended. Facebook announced both an application layer for Android with a variety of features as well as a smartphone called the HTC First, that will be available exclusively from AT&T on April 12th for $99.99. Home will be available on select Android devices starting April 12th including the One X and One X+, Samsung Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note II. When the Galaxy S4 is available later in April, it will support Home as well as the HTC One.

Facebook Home is an application layer that is placed on top of Android. It is essentially a new user interface, also known as a “skin” in much the same way that HTC does Sense or Samsung does Touchwiz for Android.

There are four main features to Facebook Home:

Cover feed — According to Facebook: “Cover feed replaces the lock screen and home screen. It’s a window into what’s happening with your friends – friends finishing a bike race, your family sharing a meal or an article about your favorite sports team. These are the beautiful, immersive experiences that you get through Home.”

Chat heads — “With chat heads you can keep chatting with friends even when you’re using other apps. When friends send you messages, a chat head appears with your friend’s face, so you see exactly who you’re chatting with. Messages reach you no matter what you’re doing – whether you’re checking email, browsing the web, or listening to music.”

Notifications — “Cover feed is great for seeing everything going on in the world. But when something happens that’s more important and directed at you, like a friend posting on your timeline, you’ll receive notifications with their profile pictures. To open notifications, just tap them. And if you don’t want to deal with them right now, you can just swipe to hide them and keep flipping through cover feed until you want them back.”

Apps — Facebook will have its own apps drawer, similar to iOS and Android. 

Here are some links to our previous and ongoing coverage of Facebook “Home” on Android:

• The Long, Weird Road To The Facebook Phone
• Facebook’s Zuckerberg: “We’re Not Going To Build A Phone”
• The Facebook Phone & The Triumph Of Native Apps Over HTML5
• Facebook Phone’s “Home” App Leaks Ahead Of Launch
• The Facebook Phone Can’t Change Your Life, And That’s A Hard Sell For HTC
• Facebook Phone: Maybe, Just Maybe, Not A Completely Moronic Idea
• Hey, Facebook! Even You Don’t Need A Facebook Phone

Time and again, Mark Zuckerberg has made it perfectly clear: ”We’re not going to build a phone.” Zuck’s most recent pronouncement came at Facebook’s 2012 fourth-quarter earnings call.

(See also Facebook’s Zuckerberg: We’re Not Going To Build A Phone.) 

On Thursday, just two months later, Facebook is widely expected to announce an Android device in partnership with HTC at an event at its Menlo Park headquarters. The phone – yes, the Facebook phone - is expected to run a modified but not fully skinned version of Android, retooled to revolve around the little blue “f” that has come so far. At least that what the leaks seem to reveal.  If we’re getting into semantics, you could say Facebook isn’t building the Facebook phone – HTC is. 

So, How Did We Get Here?

Want to review the many times Zuck has denied rumors of an official Facebook phone? Here’s a refresher:

November 3, 2010:

• “First of all, we’re not a hardware company. Second of all, our goal is not to sell anything physical; our goal is to make it so that everything can be social.”
• “It would be pretty silly for us to go after a strategy that focused on selling a small number of phones. We don’t sell hardware. That’s just not what we do.” 

September 11th, 2012:

• “That’s always been the wrong strategy for us,” he explained. “It’s a juicy thing to say we’re building a phone, which is why people want to write about it. But it’s so clearly the wrong strategy for us.”

January 30, 2013:

• “People keep on asking if we’re going to build a phone,” said Zuckerberg. “We’re not going to build a phone.”

In retrospect, it seems the denials around “building” a phone seems to have left the door open for hardware partners. It’s not like we thought Hacker Way was going to turn into Foxconn or anything, but assuming Thursday’s event turns out as expected, that Zuck sure is one literal fellow.

But What About The Other Four Facebook Phones?

The real funny thing? If Facebook launches a phone, it won’t be the first Facebook phone at all – it’ll be the fifth. 

Facebook Phones 1 and 2: Back in Februrary 2011 at Mobile World Congress, HTC unveiled a pair of phones with a curious twist: a physical button dedicated to launching the Android Facebook app. The HTC Status (a.k.a. the ChaCha) and the HTC Salsa were mid-range devices with largely unimpressive specs.

Facebook Phones 3 and 4: That April, a company called INQ announced the INQ Cloud Touch and the INQ Cloud Q – two semi-smartphones that would run a version of Android 2.2 interwoven with Facebook’s Social Graph API. The Cloud Touch made it to shelves in the UK; INQ abandoned plans to manufacture the Cloud Q early in 2012.

Of all of the “Facebook phones” to date, the HTC Status enjoyed the most success, but that’s not saying much. I reviewed it at the time – It was well built, with a funny little curve to the casing, social widgets everywhere and a tiny blue Facebook button on the bottom right. There was something likable about the Status – it was a playful little device, thoughtfully designed – but who was it for?

The Status went on sale – and then went on sale again – and ultimately just sort of faded away. Now you can get one for a penny on Amazon.

A New Mobile Era For Facebook?

But times have changed and the stakes have gotten a lot higher. After some major mobile fumbles (its slowness to the iPad, building in HTML5, etc.), Facebook now calls itself a mobile company, and really wants to mean it. 

In September of 2011, Facebook’s Android app had 66 million monthly active users. By November 2012, that number had tripled. Facebook consumers one quarter of the total time people spend on mobile apps. In the fourth quarter of 2012, 23% of Facebook’s total ad revenue was pumped into its coffers via mobile – up from 0%.

Facebook obviously gets the importance of mobile now. But it’s still not clear why a new Facebook phone is a good idea. The company is as cozy as can be on Android and iOS already, and Facebook would be lucky to sell even “a small number” of these new phones, just as Zuck warned back in 2010. Even if the new Facebook software presented unique monetization opportunities, the revenue would barely be a drop in Facebook’s ever-growing bucket.

So why bother? I guess we’ll find out on Thursday. 

All photos by Taylor Hatmaker.

The so-called “Facebook Phone” will be the big news this week. As with many highly anticipated product launches, some believable rumors are filtering out ahead of the official announcement. In this case, the hottest rumors suggest the Facebook Phone will indeed be a “home screen skin” on top of a HTC Android device. 

Facebook Home APK

Tech blog Android Police got its hands on the Android Package File (APK) that supposedly shows what the Facebook phone is going to look like and what kind of features it is going to have. Dubbed “Facebook Home,” the file shows a skin for a HTC device as well as a standalone app that will be available through the Android Google Play app store.

The phone itself looks like it will be a mid-level HTC device with a 4.3-inch screen, Android Jelly Bean (version 4.1.2), a 5-megapixel back camera and a 1.6-megapixel front camera. Code named “HTC Myst.” the whole thing looks very similar to the long line of mediocre devices that HTC released through 2011 and into 2012.

The APK shows that the device is running HTC’s Sense skin, version 4.5. HTC just released a new iteration in Sense 5 that will ship with its new flagship HTC One smartphones. The HTC skin should not matter, though, as the Facebook APK essentially creates a Facebook home screen designed to push users to Facebook services like Messenger and contacts. 

Not Just A Phone

Perhaps even more important, It looks like any user that wants to create the Facebook Home experience on their Android devices will be able to. Part of the APK is integration for Samsung’s Touchwiz skin, meaning that the app/home screen will be available outside of the dedicated HTC “Myst” device.

Facebook is well aware that it does not need a dedicated smartphone to compete with the likes of Apple, Google, BlackBerry and Microsoft. Its greatest strength has been to be one of the apps that is absolutely necessary on all of those devices. If the “Myst” device is just a proof of concept running a tightly integrated Facebook experience, the social giant can move horizontally through the Android ecosystem and give users the same experience without having to actually buy a “Facebook Phone.” 

In the end, that’s likely a much stronger position for the social networking giant.

Image: Facebook group chat from Facebook Mobile. 

Smartphone manufacturer HTC is no longer “quietly brilliant.” HTC now wants to be as in your face as possible to attract consumers from the likes of Apple and Samsung. What better way for HTC to make a major splash than by being the manufacturer of the so-called “Facebook Phone” the social network is expected to be announced this week?

That is, of course, if anybody actually wants a Facebook Phone. There is serious doubt if that will actually be the case. If nobody wants to buy a phone with tightly integrated Facebook skin, HTC will have spent a significant amount of time and probably a fair amount of money on a project that will see no tangible returns. That can be bad for HTC, a once-proud company with dwindling sales that only has so many bullets it can fire into the Smartphone Wars before its armory turns up empty.

HTC Salsa

A History With Facebook

For nearly two years, HTC has been rumored to be working with Facebook in the so-called “Project Buffy.” The project, named after Joss Whedon’s cult TV show Buffy The Vampire Slayer, is supposed to be a smartphone that runs some type of Facebook-styled mobile operating system on custom hardware. Facebook supposedly was looking for hardware engineers and mobile operating system developers to help turn the dream into reality. 

The most likely outcome, as I pointed out in May 2012, was that Facebook would take a kernel from Google’s Android and fork it into its own operating system in the same way that Amazon has done with the Kindle Fire. According to TechCrunch’s Josh Constine, the operating system for the Facebook Phone will be less of a true fork from Android and more of an “application layer” – a skin on Android in the same vein of Samsung’s TouchWiz, HTC Sense and the now-defunct MotoBlur from Motorola. 

HTC has worked with Facebook before. The Taiwanese mobile manufacturer released the “HTC Status” (also known as the HTC ChaCha) in 2011 with a “dedicated Facebook button.” That button was essentially a hardware feature that launched the Facebook Android app. HTC also made the “Salsa” with Facebook buttons that it showed off at Mobile World Congress in 2011. 

You ever see anybody using a ChaCha/Status? Anywhere? Not bloody likely. And that could be a problem for HTC with this new Facebook Phone.

Identifying Consumers

As ReadWrite editor Brian Proffitt wrote this morning, Facebook is going to have a hell of a time trying to figure out who to sell this device to. Businesses won’t want it. Neither will teenagers. 

HTC ChaCha

In the smartphone industry, there is a very delicate line for success when it comes to mobile operating systems. Essentially, you need a value play for your core business to make it work. Apple’s value is the hardware and profit margins it reaps. Google’s value from Android is to learn more about its users so to be able to better sell them advertising. BlackBerry traditionally was aimed at enterprises but had no clear advantage for regular consumers, who switched to Android/iPhone when the value became clear. Similarly, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile CE faded when its value proposition (other than merely existing) was eroded by Android/iOS. Microsoft has not been able to build a consistent following of its new Windows Phone products because of that same lack of a value proposition.

Targeting the value proposition will make it difficult for upstarts to enter the field. For instance, what does Canonical really have to offer to consumers that is also of value to its core business with an Ubuntu mobile operating system? Same goes for Tizen or Firefox OS. 

And now, apparently, for Facebook.

Facebook’s play is very similar to Google’s. The more it knows about its users, the better it can serve them advertising. A Facebook Phone would tell the social giant a lot about its users. It could then push users to its contextual Facebook Graph Search and serve them ads through it. Facebook could also integrate its various Android apps (Messenger, Camera etc.) and application store to offer more value and context. 

You know what? Google already does that and probably will do it better. It has been imagining Android and its future for a long time and each successive iteration is better, more contextual and slicker looking than the last. Facebook has neither the experience or the time to match Android. 

That leaves HTC in Lame Duck Limbo.  

ReadWrite writer Brian Hall points out that Facebook might not even need a Facebook Phone. If Facebook lacks an original value proposition, then HTC is going to have a hell of a time trying to sell a Facebook Phone. 

Bring In The Noise, Bring In The Funk

Where does that leave HTC in its battle to regain market share and respectability? 

Basically, to make a lot of noise.

Expect a heavy series of marketing and advertising from both Facebook and HTC about a Facebook Phone. In autumn 2012, HTC said that one of the reasons it had fallen behind was the lack of effective marketing. At the time, we pointed out that HTC’s problems went way beyond marketing. That will likely be the case here as well. It doesn’t matter how much noise a company makes if it is selling a product that nobody wants. 

Top image: Facebook “favorites” from Facebook Mobile.

Rumors abound about the so-called “Facebook phone,” which the social network appears likely to  unveil later this week, apparently as a fork of Android that will favor Facebook heavily in the overall user interface and experience.

The idea of a Facebook phone has long struck many people, myself included, as, well, idiotic. But there’s at least one way this device could be a success — assuming Facebook can get people to buy in to the whole notion of a Facebook-centric device.

And that’s a big problem.

Who’s The Customer?

Let’s start with a basic question: Who in the world is going to buy this thing?

(See also: Hey, Facebook! Even You Don’t Need A Facebook Phone)

Business people? Hardly. As a business-to-business platform, Facebook is a non-starter, and its use as a business-to-customer tool is very one-to-many aligned. Companies that do use Facebook to communicate one on one with customers won’t be doing it from a phone. Since Facebook is often seen as a time-waster in the business world for anyone but marketing, it would probably be easier to get a businessperson to buy a Hello Kitty! phone than one of these.

Young, hip teenagers? That’s a stretch, too, because there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that younger kids are shifting away from Facebook either because they’re bored with it or because all their parents and older relatives are there, and that’s kind of lame. Plus, this demographic is not exactly a prime target for advertising dollars, especially if we’re talking middle school and high school kids who don’t even have jobs yet.

Older demographics are a better fit, and I suspect those are the users Facebook is going after.

(See also: Zuckerberg: “We’re Not Going To Build A Phone”)

So let’s say Facebook does find a solid user base that really wants these phones. The question then becomes, how does Facebook make money at this?

Please Like This Revenue Stream

Right now, Facebook pulls in around 85% of its revenue from advertising and the rest from in-app payments, like its cut when someone buys something in a game. The problem for Facebook is that it has only just recently figured out how to get ads on mobile platforms to actually pull in revenue. In fact, it was such a huge problem that when it revealed that it wasn’t making any significant revenue on mobile advertisements, it seriously hurt the company’s initial public offering last year.

Now, though, Facebook has a plan, and it’s working. In the last quarter of 2012, Facebook raked in $305 million in mobile ad dollars — not bad, when you consider that figure stood at near zero in May 2011.

(See also: Facebook To Unveil Its ‘New Home On Android,’ Whatever That Means)

Advertising will no doubt be Facebook’s primary revenue source from these Facebook phones. If you can bring $305 million to the table by way of an app on someone else’e OS, imagine what you could do if you had the whole operating system to configure.

Of course, that’s assuming Facebook users don’t grow weary of an ad-supported platform that does little more than insert ads in news feeds every few updates or so.

But here, I think, Facebook’s going to get itself a little extra insurance.

Apps Step Up

After all, if you have the operating system, then you can manage the revenue from the apps. So why not set up a new source of revenue from sales of applications, on top of the in-app payments you get now?

This is why I believe that Facebook will be shifting ever-so-slightly from the content-is-all-with-apps-on-the-side model they’re using now and putting a little bit more emphasis on the apps. They almost have to — according to the recent IDC study my colleague Brian Hall highlighted, only 16% of mobile Facebook users interact with apps now. If Facebook wants to up the revenue from that side of the house, then it’s going to have to make apps more prominent for users.

An Android-based app interface, which is a far different presentation than Facebook uses for its in-network apps, might be just the thing.

But, ultimately, will those apps be the right fit for users? Users want apps for news, weather or sports, not just game apps to play Farmville. Facebook can probably rule out productivity apps, but users won’t want to live on junk food alone.

Google gets benefit from Android because it plugs users into into its services. Amazon gets benefit from its Android fork for Kindle Fire because it plugs users into its shopping network.

A Facebook iteration of Android will have to do the same thing: plug users into something users want and that will make money for Facebook. Advertising alone won’t be enough.

If the rumors are true — and given Facebook’s management of the press, I suspect they are — then by next week the world will finally have its “Facebook Phone.”

Whoopee. A device, and possibly an entire operating system, that’s almost wholly unnecessary and likely to benefit pretty much no one — neither Facebook nor its users. The fact is, iPhone and Android users are certainly not hurting for Facebook access. Is there really more that Facebook can offer us — or more data it can capture from us — by having its own smartphone OS? Unlikely.

Like It Or Not, Here It Comes

Nonetheless, the die appears cast. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and others now agree that Facebook’s coy “Come see our new home on Android” announcement scheduled for next week is in fact the official coming out of the long-rumored Facebook Phone. Nick Bilton and Brian Chen, writing for the Times, assert that Facebook is set to announce its own version of Android, one ”specifically optimized for Facebook and designed for an HTC phone”:

When the device is turned on, it will immediately display a Facebook user’s home screen, the source said, a fact reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. Facebook’s camera and messaging apps will be the default apps for the core functions of the phone.

Facebook should know better. Its own bought-and-paid-for data shows that there’s really no need for a Facebook phone.

We Are Already Facebook Junkies

Earlier this week, a Facebook-sponsored IDC survey of iPhone and Android users revealed, shockingly, that we are a nation of Facebook junkies. The average smartphone user apparently checks his or her Facebook status nearly 14 times every single day.

Facebook is the third most popular smartphone activity, according to the IDC data; 70% of respondents said they use their smartphones to access the social network. (Email was tops at 78%; Web browsing came in next, at 73%.) In other words, Facebook trumps maps, search, games and other activities on iPhones and Androids. Of the respondents who use Facebook on their smartphones, 61% check it from their phone at least once a day. 

It’s hard to see just how much a Facebook phone, or Facebook OS, could shift these Facebook-friendly numbers. (Which, again, Facebook paid for.) Assuming you believe IDC, almost half (43%) of all respondents already check Facebook from their phone daily. Facebook would doubtless like to push that number up higher, but you have to wonder how much additional marginal usage it can squeeze by shoehorning users into Facebook Messenger instead of text messaging.

More data points on Facebook usage from the IDC survey include:

• Average daily time smartphone users spent on Facebook is 32 minutes, 51 seconds.
• Average number of daily sessions on Facebook is 13.8. These sessions typically last 2 minutes, 22 seconds.
• Overall numbers for Facebook usage are higher on the weekends than on weekdays, and also higher closer to bedtime than during the day.
• When broken down by specific activity, those 13.8 daily sessions are comprised of users checking their newsfeed (seven times per day on average), using Facebook messaging (4.1) and updating their status (2.7). 
• 16% of Facebook smartphone users play games on Facebook daily.
• Facebook consumes an astounding one of every four minutes of time smartphone users spend on “social and communications activities.”
• Nearly 50% of users access Facebook from their smartphone while doing errands, shopping, preparing dinner and working out.
• Strangely enough, these numbers are nearly exactly the same for people engaged in physically social activities. IDC says that approximately 50% access Facebook from their phone while at class, eating out, at a concert, and even while at the movies.

What To Get The Facebook User Who Has Everything?

In other words, if a user has a smartphone, it’s pretty clear that he or she can already engage with Facebook at any time and from any place to his or her heart’s content. So if there is a Facebook Phone, the strategy behind it is probably much less about usage and more about Facebook encroaching directly on Google territory: search, maps and local advertising. That’s what a Facebook Phone should focus on.

Though the survey naturally focused on Facebook and social media, it offered several other interesting facts, including:

• 155 million, or about 50% of the entire U.S. population uses a smartphone, with this number expected to climb to 181 million (57% of the population) by the end of this year.
• 79% reach for their smartphone within 15 minutes of waking, and a surprisingly high 62% grab their smartphone the moment they wake. The numbers are even higher for those in the 18-24 demographic.
• Similarly, 79% of respondents (not necessarily the same as above) have their smartphones with them for “all but up to 2 hours of their waking day.”
• 25% of respondents can’t recall not having their phone at their side.
• 18-24 year olds might be doing something suspicious on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. According to IDC’s methodology statement: “During Tuesday through Thursday, 18-24 year-old respondents were underrepresented.” IDC had to adjust its weighting to counter this unexplained drop.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Facebook has big plans for something involving Android on April 4, according to an invitation to a press conference that the social giant sent on Thursday evening. ”Come see our new home on Android,” it reads — whatever that means.

This event seems unlikely to showcase a mere update to Facebook’s Android app, as those typically warrant a blog post and not much more. Instead, Facebook seems likely to have bigger plans for Android.

TechCrunch’s Josh Constine, who was dead right about Facebook’s last announcement of its updated news feeds, believes that Facebook might be announcing a modified version of Android, specifically optimized for Facebook and designed for an HTC phone. That might well amount to the “Facebook phone” that so many people have been expecting for so long.

Of course, it would likely also present Google with another headache, should Facebook join Amazon in promoting a heavily modified — i.e., “forked” — version of Android.

But On The Other Hand

Suppose that speculation is off-base, though, and Facebook is just going to a lot of trouble to unveil an updated Android app. It could still have a few tricks up its sleeves.

Earlier this month, my phone asked me to update the Facebook app with the same message as AllFacebook described, offering to upgrade the app to a new version (2.2.1-g12, in AllFacebook’s case). The version number now sits at version 2.3. However, one of the permissions that the Facebook app asked for was to “download files without notification.”

That could herald a divorce with the Google Play market, as Facebook would then presumably be free to launch silent updates to Android phones without permission. In the most extreme case, that permission could conceivably allow it to modify Android on-the-fly for users. (Whether users would welcome that is another question entirely.)

One possible feature that Facebook could add, of course, would be to update the mobile app with the multiple News Feeds that it added to the desktop version just a few weeks ago. Those feeds segmented out Photos, games, music, and subscribed Pages, de-cluttering the main News Feed and giving photos more prominence.

That update, however, lifted the left-hand nav bar from within the mobile application and added it to the desktop version of the site, possibly meaning that the mobile interface will continue to drive Facebook’s design going forward. If true, then that means that we should expect future enhancements first within the mobile app, and only later on the desktop.

On Wednesday, Facebook also implemented an improved version of mobile ads. With these new capabilities, developer can reach specific versions of Android and iOS mobile operating systems and devices on Wi-Fi only connections, developer Calvin Grunewald wrote in a post. “For example, now you can reach Jelly Bean 4.2 or iOS 5.0 and greater with a different message based on what is most relevant to the people using those devices.”

Developers can now create and buy mobile app install ads through Facebook’s Ads Create Tool, the company added.