Ever feel like Facebook is everywhere you look? (Image credit: Getty Image )
For a while now, Facebook users have been saying they’ve had just about enough. They’re saying it with their words, telling Pew researchers they plan to spend less time interacting with the service this year, and they’re backing it up with their actions, cutting down by an average of 30 minutes a day last year, according to Nielsen.
This is, obviously, a problem.
Enter Facebook Home. What is it, exactly? In Facebook’s own words, “Home isn’t a phone or operating system, and it’s also more than just an app. Home is a completely new experience that lets you see the world through people, not apps.”
In plain English, Home is a suite of apps that, together, constitute an interface for Android users willing to let Facebook mediate pretty much everything they do on their mobile devices. Here’s a video that doesn’t really explain it all that much but does make it look like Home is for people who like dinner parties, dogs and sunsets.
Giving a public that has pretty clearly said it could stand a little less Facebook in its face a product designed to make them spend dramatically more time Facebooking is a little perverse, but the potential rewards are enormous. It’s a little like the way corn growers figured out that, while Americans can only be induced to eat so much corn, they’ll consume virtually endless amounts if you slip a tiny bit into everything they eat in the form of corn syrup.
It’s also a logical extension of founder Mark Zuckerberg‘s vision, which has always been about Facebook evolving from a destination into a social layer for the entire internet.
But will Facebook Home — which hits the Android Play store April 12 — solve the problem of Facebook fatigue? Or will it only exacerbate it?
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