Facebook is making yet another bold move to attract new users to its Home platform by adding content from Flickr, Pinterest, Tumblr and its own Instagram.
Facebook Inc., world's largest social networking site, announced Thursday that it will incorporate content from Flickr, Pinterest, Tumblr and its own Instagram into its struggling Home lock screen to attract new users. This is a major step in the development of Facebook Home, which lost users early after its debut in April.
Facebook Home is an app that replaces the user interface of select smartphones with Facebook Feed, notifications and one-click access to social media. The much-hyped Facebook Home made its appearance with HTC First and was available for download as a standalone app on Google Play Store. It attracted a tremendous audience initially. In less than 10 days the app reached 500,000 downloads and in a month it surpassed 1 million. But it has failed to cross the 5-million mark on Play Store.
With the latest integration of neighboring social media services like Flickr, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram, Facebook hopes to attract new users who use these services on a daily basis. The latest update will only be available in Facebook for Android Beta, but will reach out to all users soon.
"Today you can view more of the content you care about on your lock screen," Tom Alison, Facebook Engineering Manager, wrote in the company's blog post. "When you wake up your phone, swipe through photos and posts from Flickr, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram, in addition to Facebook."
The latest move doesn't come as a surprise as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spilled the beans about the incorporation of social media sites at the TC Disrupt, last month.
With the new update, users can connect their preferred social media service via Home settings menu and log in with their credentials. Facebook will bring all the latest posts from the chosen service on the Home lock screen. Users can click on a "view on" link to go to the site.
While the introduction of four new social sites on Facebook Home is a good step to improve Home user-base, it would be interesting to see Facebook incorporating more services like Twitter in the near future.
Users can download the Home app from Google Play Store for free.
